In the phonetics laboratory, various types of machines and instruments are employed in the studyof sound materials collected in field studies. In order to record and examine the characteristics of thesounds and the articulation of speech sounds, the following machines for analyses are available: asound-spectrograph, a pitch extractor and an electro-palatograph.The sound-spectrograph attached to a computer makes frequency analyses of sound waves,extracts components of the sound wave at a certain time, and shows them as a particular pattern inblack and gray colors on the screen. The pattern can be printed out on a special paper. The pattern maybe obtained either on wide-band or narrow-band. The wide-band pattern mainly shows the length andquality of each sound wave, while the narrow-band one shows the height of the fundamental frequencyand its height change, as well as its length. Furthermore, this machine includes functions of FFTanalysis as a certain time (i. e., section analysis), LPC analysis (to estimate the vocal tract transferfunction) and so forth. The maximum recording time is about ten minutes (at 20KHz sampling) on thepresent computer system and the machines can analyze long time data like sentences. Furthermore, apart of the recorded sound wave can be deleted or a part of a different sound wave can be appended atany point of the originally recorded sound wave, and a new sound wave can be created with thismachine. A new Digital Sound Spectrograph has been recently acquired by the Information ResourcesCenter of the Institute. This new machine has real-time capability. The pitch extractor analyzes the fundamental frequency and the degree of sound strength, anddisplays the result on the screen. This machine can select frequency ranges for input sounds (e.g.,male, female and child sounds) and it enables us to obtain much more exact data on fundamentalfrequency than can be obtained by using the sound-spectrograph. The electro-palatograph is one of the devices for observing directly and recording the articulatorymovements of the tongue. The artificial palate, which is embedded with 32 small electrodes, isattached to the speaker’s hard palate. The 332 small lamps on the front surface of the machine indicate,by going on and off, how the tongue contacts with the electrodes at each point of time. The result isrecorded on special paper. In addition, there are tape duplicators for copying tapes and a video tapeeditor. There are also various types of tape recorders and a sound-proof room for exact recording.The speech and language library attached to the phonetics laboratory holds important recordedmaterials on languages, folk tales and folk music obtained through field studies. Recorded disks andtapes of various languages in the world are available for loan.PHONETICSLABORATORY22
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