Undergraduate Course: Phonetics and Laboratory Phonology (LASC10090)
Course Outline
| School | School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| 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 the study of the the phonetic realization of a) constituent structure and b) suprasegmental contrasts.
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| Course description |
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 dissertation project.
In LEL2B, 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 Phonetics & Laboratory Phonology, 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 course includes lectures, lab practicals, and readings.
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Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should have completed at least 3 Linguistics/Language Sciences courses at grade B or above. We will only consider University/ College level courses. These courses must have included a basic introduction to phonetics and phonology. |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2019/20, 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
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 18,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 9,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
169 )
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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 (less than 3500 words). |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Understand the relation between phonetics and phonology, and be able to engage critically with research articles in this area
- Understand how to use instrumental data to answer research questions in phonology and phonetics, and understand the pitfalls of phonetic transcription
- Make a sound recording and process it for acoustic analysis
- Create, modify, and use scripts to automate the analysis of several acoustic features, including duration, F0, spectral balance, and formant frequencies
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Additional Class Delivery Information |
Friday lab drop-in sessions (Week 4 onwards) are optional. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Alice Turk
Tel: (0131 6)50 3483
Email: a.turk@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Lynne Robertson
Tel: (0131 6)50 9870
Email: Lynne.Robertson@ed.ac.uk |
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