Undergraduate Course: Phonetics and Laboratory Phonology (LASC10090)
Course Outline
| School | School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| 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 Honours or MSc dissertation project. In LEL2B and 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 practical's, and readings.
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| Course description |
Not entered
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Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2015/16, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
196 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Weekly reading reports (5%)
Students will receive 5% of their mark for the completion of weekly reading reports.
Lab Reports (30%)
Students will take part in 3 practicals and submit 3 lab reports based on these practicals which reflect a student's practice and highlight challenges encountered during the process (approx 600 words each). Only the best two of the three lab reports will count towards the mark (at 15% each)
Project (65%)
Students will take part in, and write up, a laboratory experiment designed to show phonetic effects of prosodic structure and segmental context on phonetic parameters such as duration, fundamental frequency and formant frequencies (approx 2500 words). |
| 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
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.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Alice Turk
Tel: (0131 6)50 3483
Email: a.turk@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Samantha Bell
Tel: (0131 6)50 3602
Email: sam.bell@ed.ac.uk |
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