Postgraduate Course: Phonetics and Laboratory Phonology (LASC11125)
Course Outline
| School | School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | The general area of this course is the relation between phonology (i.e., the system of sound contrasts, as well as their ordering, groupings, and relative prominence within a planned utterance), and phonetics (the realization of utterances in articulation and acoustics). We show that a great deal of phonetic variability can be explained through an understanding of phonological structure, and that
phonological questions can be answered using phonetic data. We explore these issues through topics such as: a) the phonetic realization of prosodic structure and suprasegmental contrasts, b) categorical vs. gradient assimilation processes.
The goal is not just to offer insight in this topic area, but also to equip students with the skills and expertise to carry out research independently, for example in an MSc dissertation project.
In the MSc Introduction to Phonology & Phonetics course, students have learned about acoustic representations, and gotten a first experience with making measurements on these. That basic¿level expertise forms the foundation of the practical component of Intermediate Phonetics, where it will be developed in a number of ways. Students will explore issues of experimental design, they will make their own recordings, process them using Praat software, and learn to automate acoustic measurements, in part or in full, depending on the nature of the measurement. In the process, they will learn how to script within the Praat software environment. For many this will be their first experience with programming.
The knowledge gained in this course will form the foundation for more specialized professional training in speech technology, speech therapy, and forensic phonetics.
The course includes lectures, lab practicals, and readings. |
| Course description |
Example Syllabus: these are the topics that will be covered in 2014/2015, taught by Bert Remijsen and Alice Turk
1. Introduction to the Course
2. Prosodic Structure 1: Prosodic Constituency, Breathing, and Pausing.
3. Introduction to the Project
4. Making Recordings
5. Prosodic Structure 2: Prosodic Constituency and Grammar
6. Prosodic Structure 3: Prosodic Constituency and Phonetic Correlates
7. Prosodic Structure 4: Prosodic Constituency and Phonetic Correlates
8. Prosodic Structure 5: Prosodic Prominence structure
9. Prosodic Structure 6: Prosodic Prominence structure and its relationship to Grammar
10. Prosodic Structure 7: Prosodic Prominence structure and phonetic correlates
11. Acoustic phonetics practical 1,2: initial processing; basics of scripting
12. Acoustic phonetics practical 3,4: automating duration measurements
13. Acoustic phonetics practical 5,6: semi¿automating f0 measurements
14. Acoustic phonetics practical 7,8: semi¿automating formant measurements
15. Acoustic phonetics practical 9,10: semi¿automating measurements on
energy distribution / spectral balance
16. Prosodic Structure 8: A brief introduction to Intonational Phonology
17. Accounting for Phonetic variability through speech production models: Articulatory Phonology
18. Categorical vs. gradient processes: Assimilation 1
19. Electropalatography and ultrasound demonstration + exercise
20. Categorical vs. gradient processes: Assimilation 2
21. Presenting your results
22. Pitfalls of transcriptional data: Covert Contrast
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
Students MUST have passed:
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | Students must have passed the following course, or its equivalent:
Introduction to Phonology & Phonetics (LASC11031), OR must be taking it simultaneously. |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2014/15, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
100
(
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
98 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Completion of weekly reading reports (5%)
Lab reports (30%) 600 words each
- Lab Report 1 Submission Deadline: Thursday 9th October 2014, 12 noon
- Lab Report 1 Return Deadline: 31st October 2014
- Lab Report 2 Submission Deadline: Thursday 6th November 2014, 12 noon
- Lab Report 2 Return Deadline: 28th November 2014
Project (65%) 2000 words
- Submission Deadline: Thursday 27th November 2014, 12 noon
- Return Deadline: 19th December 2014 |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
1) Understanding the relation between phonetics and phonology, and being able to engage critically with research articles in this area;
2) Understanding how to use instrumental data to answer research questions in phonology and phonetics, and understanding the pitfalls of phonetic transcription;
3) Knowing how to make a sound recording and process it for acoustic analysis;
4) Knowing how to create, modify, and use scripts to automate the analysis of several acoustic features, including duration, F0, spectral balance, and formant frequencies;
5) Knowing how to interpret articulatory records of speech, and understanding the advantages and disadvantages of articulatory vs. acoustic methods for answering research questions in phonology and phonetics.
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Reading List
Indicative Biography
Beckman, M. E., Hirschberg, J., & Shattuck-Hufnagel, S. (2005). The original ToBi system and the evolution of the ToBi framework. In S.-A. Jun (Ed.), Prosodic Typology: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing: Oxford University Press.
Browman, C. P., & Goldstein, L. (1992a). Articulatory phonology: an overview. Phonetica, 49, 155¿180.
Dilley, L., Shattuck-Hufnagel, S., & Ostendorf, M. (1996). Glottalization of word-initial vowels as a function of prosodic structure. Journal of Phonetics, 24(4), 423-444.
Ellis, L., & Hardcastle,W. J. (2002). Categorical and gradient properties of assimilation in alveolar to velar sequences: evidence from EPG and EMA data. Journal of Phonetics, 30, 373¿396.
Fougeron, C., & Keating, P. (1997). Articulatory strengthening at edges of prosodic domains. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 101, 3728-3740.
Grosjean, F. & M. Collins (1979). Breathing, pausing and reading, Phonetica 36(2), 98-114.
Gibbon, F. (1990). Lingual activity in two speech-disordered children¿s attempts to produce velar and alveolar stop consonants: evidence from electropalatographic (EPG) data. British Journal of Disorders of Communication, 25, 329¿340.
Harrington, J. & Cassidy, S. (1999). Techniques in Speech Acoustics. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Chapter 5.
Ladd, D. R. (2008). Intonational Phonology (2nd ed.): Cambridge University Press.
Ladd, D. R., & Scobbie, J. (2003). External sandhi as gestural overlap? counter-evidence from Sardinian. In J. Local, R. Ogden, & R. Temple (Eds.), Phonetic Interpretation: Papers in Laboratory Phonology VI (pp. 162¿180). Cambridge University Press.
Ladd, D.R. (2009). Phonetics in phonology. In J. Goldsmith, J. Riggle & A. Yu (Eds.). Handbook of Phonological Theory. Blackwell.
Ladefoged, P. (1996). Elements of acoustic phonetics (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press.
Ladefoged, P. (2003). Phonetic data analysis: an introduction to fieldwork and instrumental techniques. Blackwell.
Nisbett, A. (1985). The use of microphones. Hastings House.
Nolan, F. (1992). The descriptive role of segments: evidence from assimilation. In G. J.Docherty & D. R. Ladd, (Eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology II: Gesture, Segment, Prosody. Cambridge University Press.
Scobbie, J., Gibbon, F., Hardcastle, W. J., & Fletcher, P. (2000). Covert contrast as a stage in the acquisition of phonetics and phonology. In M. Broe & J. B.Pierrehumbert (Eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology V: Language Acquisition. Cambridge University Press.
Shattuck-Hufnagel, S. & Turk, A. E. (1996). A prosody tutorial for investigators of auditory sentence processing, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 25(2), 193¿247.
Shattuck-Hufnagel, S., Ostendorf, M., & Ross, K. (1994). Stress shift and early pitch accent placement in lexical items in American English. Journal of Phonetics, 22, 357-388.
Sluijter, A. M. C., & van Heuven, V. J. (1996). Spectral balance as an acoustic correlate of linguistic stress. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 100, 2471-2485.
Wightman, C. W., Shattuck-Hufnagel, S., Ostendorf, M., & Price, P. J. (1992). Segmental durations in the vicinity of prosodic phrase boundaries. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 91(3), 1707-1717.
Zsiga, E. C. (1995). An acoustic and electopalatographic study of lexical and postlexical palatalisation in American English. In B. Connell & A. Arvaniti (Eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology IV: Phonology and Phonetic Evidence (pp. 282¿302). Cambridge University Press. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Critical thinking, writing, experiment design, scripting, data analysis |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Alice Turk
Tel: (0131 6)50 3483
Email: a.turk@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Toni Noble
Tel: (0131 6)51 3188
Email: Toni.noble@ed.ac.uk |
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