Course Meeting Times
Lectures: 1 session / week, 3 hours / session
Course Description
The goal of this course is to prepare you to engage in experimental investigations of questions related to linguistic theory, focusing on phonetics and phonology. The course will be organized around four main topics (subject to revision):
- Vowel inventories
- Speech perception and the distribution of phonological contrasts
- Intonation and the marking of focus
- The effects of predictability on speech production
In the process of investigating these topics, we will cover some phonological theory, the basics of speech acoustics, acoustic analysis, speech perception, and experimental design. Students will develop and execute their own experimental projects during the course.
Prerequisites
4 subjects in linguistics
Grading and Requirements
Vowel Inventories
Cross-linguistic generalizations about the nature of inventories of vowel contrasts. How can we explain these generalizations? Lindblom’s Theory of Adaptive Dispersion.
Speech Perception and the Distribution of Phonological Contrasts
Investigating the hypothesis that phonological contrasts preferentially appear in contexts where there are better perceptual cues to those contrasts (Steriade’s ’licensing by cue’).
Intonation and the Marking of Focus
One of the ways in which intonation affects meaning is via its role in marking focused constituents. How does this marking work?
The Effects of Predictability on Speech Production
A number of non-phonological factors have been shown to affect the phonetic realization of words, e.g. word frequency, lexical neighborhood density and contextual predictability. What is the nature of these effects? How do they interact with each other? Are they a consequence of ’listener-oriented’ behavior?
Essential Background
Phonetic Theory
- Overview of ’the speech chain':
- Articulatory phonetics,
- Basic acoustics, waveforms and spectrograms,
- Audition and perception.
- Articulatory-acoustic relations
- The acoustic theory of speech production (Fant 1960, etc).
- Contextual variation in segment realization.
- Speech perception
- The problems of speech perception and lexical access.
- Perceptual cues to contrasts.
- Intonation and phrasing
- ToBI system for transcribing English intonation.
Experimental Phonetics
- Experimental design and elementary statistics
- Digital Signal Processing
- Sampling theory
- FFT, LPC, spectrograms, pitch tracking
- Using PRAAT speech analysis software
Requirements
A. Readings and class discussions
B. Assignments - approximately one per week
C. Final project
- Propose an experimental test of a hypothesis (by Ses #5)
- Run a pilot experiment
- Present your study in class (in Ses #12)
- Write up the project (draft due in Ses #12, final version due 10 days after Ses #12)
This is a ‘communication intensive’ course, so written work and presentations will be important.
A draft of the final project will have to be submitted in time for you to revise it in light of my comments.
Grading
| REQUIREMENTS | PERCENTAGES |
|---|---|
| Class participation | 10% |
| Assignments | 15% |
| Final project presentation | 15% |
| Final project paper | 60% |
Textbook
Johnson, Keith. Acoustic and Auditory Phonetics. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003. ISBN: 9781405101233.
Please see readings for additional texts.
Calendar
| SES # | TOPICS | KEY DATES |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Introduction Laboratory phonology |
|
| 2 |
Basic audition Digital signal processing |
|
| 3 |
Source-filter theory Acoustics of vowels |
|
| 4 | Adaptive dispersion | |
| 5 |
Spectral analysis Licensing by cue |
Proposal of an experimental test of a hypothesis due |
| 6 | Licensing by cue (cont.) | |
| 7 | Intonation | |
| 8 | The meaning of intonation | |
| 9 |
Basic statistics Effects of the lexicon and context on speech perception |
|
| 10 | Effects of the lexicon and context on speech perception (cont.) | |
| 11 | Phonetics and phonology of accent variation | |
| 12 | Student presentations |
Draft of final project due Final version due 10 days after Ses #12 |
