SYLLABUS:
Phonetics, L306
April 25, 2008
(The
syllabus will be
frequently updated. Check for latest version.)
Section 11733, Spring, 2008
MW 10:10-11:00, BH 322
F
10:10-11:00, LI
402
Instructor: Robert
Port
Office Hours: MW 2:30-3:30
Goals. You should learn:
(a) to perceive and produce
the
most common sound types of the languages of the world,
including Tone-and-Break
Index (ToBI) transcription for English accents and intonation,
(b) the physiological properties of the speech-producing
apparatus,
(c) the basic properties of sound in general,
(d) how speech sounds are similar and different from
each other acoustically, including how to create and interpret
acoustic displays using appropriate software,
(e) why speech performance is a challenging theoretical problem
for (and possibly incompatible with) linguistic theory.
(f) how speech behavior reflects innate human predispositions
plus lots of generalized learning.
Friday Laboratory Class. On Fridays, we will meet in the Main Library 402 (an
STC cluster),
where each student will have their own computer and should bring their
own headphones (or ear buds).
Requirements. Students
will do
the home work assignments, a number of laboratory projects, take a
written midterm plus a final exam. The weekly homeworks count
15%, projects will total 15%, phonetic transcription quiz 10%, midterm
30%, final 30%.
Text Materials
- Ladefoged, Peter (2006) A
Course in
Phonetics, Fifth Edition
(Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich: Fort Worth). Bring your textbook to
class on at least M and W. (Earlier editions are quite different
from the 5th, so get this latest edition.)
- Port's Readings. handouts and
webpage
- Ladefoged's
Instructional
Recordings for Course in Phonetics.
(The content of the CD with the textbook.)
- Audio clips and
exercises linked to the Syllabus page.
- Software: a) For your own computer, download Websurfer, a free, easy-to-use
editor and spectrogram program for Macs and PCs. You may also need a
more sophisticated speech analysis program called PRAAT.
Syllabus
Homeworks should be turned in on Friday (preferably in class).
- Week 1. (starting Jan
7) Overview:
Phonetic Alphabet and Speech Anatomy.
- Read Ladefoged, Chapter
1. Homework (due Friday Jan 11 in
class):
-
Exercises A-F (pp. 24-31).
- Week 2. (starting Jan
14) Phonetics vs. Phonology
- Read Ladefoged, Chapter 2.
Homework: D (always transcribe the American voice), F, G, H (pp.
49-50)
Week
3. (Jan 21) English
Consonants.
Read
Ladefoged,
Chapter 3.
Homework:
A-D, pp. 76-80 (Print
out the pages from the CD at UCLA, or copy from book)
Do exercises below on `Port's Speech Dynamics Model' and turn in.
Port's Speech Dynamics Model
including a page of exercises.
Week 4 (Jan 28)
Vowels
of
English.
Read Ladef, Chapter 4. Homework: C, D
but
turn in only I
for both British and American speakers (pp 101-103 ).
Listen to Port's description of
Vowel
Transcription [
mp3 recording] and [
vowel symbols]
Week 5. (Feb 4)
English Allophonic Rules
Week 6. (Feb 11)
Prosody and ToBI
Read Ladefoged, Chapt 5.
Homework:
Transcribe
very narrowly
fragments on
this
recording: from a speaker
of
British
English and a speaker from Boston. (On Window, right click the hotlink
and save the file locally.) Print the
text on this page and write
your transcription on this sheet. Turn in Friday.
Friday: Transcription quiz in
the lab.
Week 7. (Feb 18) TobI Analysis of
English
Intonation
Read Chapter 5 again with
special attention to
the
ToBI discussion
Homework
Assignment : Some
Tobi Practice
Homework: A. ToBI transcription of the Bush
clips, 10- 13 utterances on this
page.: Some
ToBi Practice-3
B. Do these clips from the `Rainbow
Passage,' spkr Prof. Catherine Harris (of
CUNY). Print this page,
then transcribe Tobi.
phrase 1, phrase
2, phrase
3, phrase
4, phrase
5
Week 8. (Feb 25) Phonation and Air Stream Mechanisms.
Week 9. (March 3)
Places of
Articulation and
Manners.
- Spring
Break (Mar 10)
- Week 10-11. (March 17, March 24)
Acoustics
of
Speech.
- Homework: Problems A, B, C on pp. 208 for a
- Read half of Ladef Chap 8 (only pp. 181-184 and
audio demos) and my Acoustics
of Speech handouts.
- 1. Basic
Acoustics. 2. Acoustics
of Speech.
- Useful demos on acoustics are at Dan Russel's
Acoustics Demos.
- Further material on acoustics at Kewley-Port's `Speech Websites'.
Week 12. (March 31) Acoustics of Speech, Vowels and
Spectrogram Reading
Read Ladef Chaps 8 (184-208) and Chap 9 on vowels.
Week 13. (April 7) Spectrogram Reading.
Read Ladef
Chap 10: syllables, sonority
Xray
views of speech production.
See Kevin
Munhall's webpage
for information about his collection.
Week 14. (April 14) Spectrogram Reading.
Check out the tutorial on
spectrogram reading by Rob Hagiwara. He also
posts a `mystery
spectrogram' every month for you to practice on. You
can try to read his earlier mystery spectrograms and then check your
accuracy for further practice. For each one, he explains the
evidence that one should have seen that would justify the correct
analysis. My only complaint about this very useful website
is that the aspect ratio of his spectrograms is different than the
other SGs we have been looking at. His frequency scale is too
tall relative to the time scale. (Of course, you could make the
image look more like those we have been using by copy the image into a
graphics program and stretching time or compressing frequency).
DEMO.
Sine Wave Speech. By Robert Remez and Phil Rubin.
Try these demos at this
location. This is
http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Haskins/MISC/SWS/SWS.html.
Formant tracks are replaced by sinusoid tone sweeps. Astonishly,
although
these do not LOOK like speech (in spectrogram form) or SOUND like
speech,
you can still understand most of the text. Since they retain the
dynamical
properties of speech trajectories, it seems we can hear them as speech
anyway. Remarkable.
Lab
assignment, April 18
Week
15. (April 21) Speech in Continuous Time vs. Segmental
Time. Review.
- Read Port
(2006)
`The
graphical basis of phones and phonemes' In
Murray Munro and Ocke-Schwen
Bohn (eds.) Second
Language Speech Learning: The Role of Language Experience in Speech
Perception
and Production. Benjamins, Amsterdam.
pp. 349-365.
- Read Port
``All is Prosody'' a talk for Prosody2008.
- Read: Ladef Chap 11
Take-home
exam.
Questions delivered Fri, April 25 and returned Tues, April 29.
Review
Sheet for 2008 Final Exam.
RF
Port, Copyright Indiana University.