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, process audio recordings 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, 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 2024/25, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| 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%)
Lab Reports (30%)
Project (65%) |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Discuss the relation between phonetics and phonology, and engage critically with research articles in this area
- Recognise how to use instrumental data to answer research questions in phonology and phonetics, and critically analyse the pitfalls of phonetic transcription
- 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 |
This course provides students with the opportunity to build skills related to independent thinking and research, data management, data visualisation, data analysis, and the process of working on and reporting on a project. The course asks students to learn about various ways of measuring acoustic properties in speech and then apply these to carrying out analysis of a data set for the final project paper. They will learn about programming for speech analysis (no prior experience needed) and how to measure, reason about, and describe patterns in the data. The course develops skills related to the understanding and analysis of speech sounds, this can be a transferable skill for various other applications and future job prospects including speech technology and clinical applications (though the course does not cover these, it does prepare students for analysis of speech in these domains to some extent).
Core skills gained or developed on this course:
Critical thinking; Critical analysis and evaluation; Data collection; Data analysis and evaluation; Enhanced programming/coding skills; Independence; Preparation, planning and organisation; Problem solving; Academic reading skills; Report writing; Research skills; Time management; Workload management; Written communication; Writing clearly and concisely. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Jeremy Steffman
Tel:
Email: jeremy.steffman@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Susan Hermiston
Tel: (0131 6)50 3440
Email: Susan.Hermiston@ed.ac.uk |
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