Module Catalogue 2024/25

Pre Requisite Comment

N/A

Co Requisite Comment

N/A

Aims

This module provides students with an introduction to the study of phonetics and phonology.
The Wednesday sessions are devoted to learning about the human vocal mechanism, the sounds it can produce, and how those sounds can be classified. In tutorials you will learn to distinguish and produce most the sounds of the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), using examples from a wide range of languages, and many accents of English.
The Thursday sessions will provide an introduction to Acoustic Phonetics. Lectures in week 1 and 2 will provide an introduction to the theoretical aspects of the physics of sounds and to the software programs available for acoustic analysis of speech. This will be followed by a block of 7 interactive lectures in computer clusters that will explore source and filter theory for different classes of sounds and suprasegmental phenomena (vowels, fricatives, stops, nasals and nasalised vowels, approximants (including laterals and rhotics), connected speech processes and prosody). The last 2 weeks of the semester will be taken by auditory and acoustic transcription practice.

Outline Of Syllabus

This module provides students with an introduction to the study of phonetics and phonology.
The Wednesday sessions are devoted to learning about the human vocal mechanism, the sounds it can produce, and how those sounds can be classified. In tutorials you will learn to distinguish and produce most the sounds of the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), using examples from a wide range of languages, and many accents of English.
The Thursday sessions will provide an introduction to Acoustic Phonetics. Lectures in week 1 and 2 will provide an introduction to the theoretical aspects of the physics of sounds and to the software programs available for acoustic analysis of speech. This will be followed by a block of 7 interactive lectures in computer clusters that will explore source and filter theory for different classes of sounds and suprasegmental phenomena (vowels, fricatives, stops, nasals and nasalised vowels, approximants (including laterals and rhotics), connected speech processes and prosody). The last 2 weeks of the semester will be taken by auditory and acoustic transcription practice.

Outline of Syllabus (maximum 4000 characters):

Wednesday Topics:
1.       Introduction to phonetics: Speech and writing
2.       Introduction to phonetics: The IPA and transcription
3.       Consonants: place of articulation
4.       Consonants: manner of articulation
5.       Consonants: Phonation, aspiration and VOT
6.       Consonants: complex articulations
7.       Initiation: airstream mechanisms, non-pulmonic consonants
8.       Cardinal vowels and vowel quadrilateral
9.       Introduction to phonology, with focus on English phonology
10.       Connected speech processes
11.       Introduction to Sociophonetics
12.       Prosody and intonation

Thursday Topics:
1.       Introduction into instrumental and acoustic phonetics
2.       Sound and sound waves
3.       Source and filter theory of speech production
4.       Introduction to Praat
5.       Acoustic properties of sounds
6.       Connected speech processes
7.       Acoustic analysis in the assessment of consonants
8.       Phonological assessment of vowels
9.       Phonological assessment of prosody

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

Students who have successfully completed the module will be able to:
- Understand the principal processes underlying the production of speech sounds (not exclusively those of English)
- Define key technical terms in phonetics and phonology
- Identify and describe the conventions established for classifying and transcribing speech sounds
- Identify the factors which govern variability in speech production (contextual, inter-/intra-speaker, connected speech processes)
- Analyse spoken utterances by providing a detailed account of the laryngeal and supralaryngeal articulations involved and by taking variability into account
- Identify the principal acoustic and aerodynamic properties of speech
- Relate articulatory and acoustics properties of speech
- Perform a segmentation of spectrograms using relevant information from the acoustic trace and
more general information about variability in speech

Intended Skill Outcomes

Students who have successfully completed the module will be able to:
- Develop a basic ability to listen objectively to speech and to transcribe speech sounds accurately
using the IPA transcription conventions
- Develop a basic ability to distinguish and produce a wide variety of IPA sounds
- Generate and interpret a spectrographic representation of an utterance
- Design material for data elicitation
- Record, observe, and analyse natural and lab speech
- Learn to use various instrumental techniques for speech analysis
- Write a concise report involving the presentation of quantitative data

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

The mix of teaching methods is geared to develop knowledge of key theoretical concepts and enable to deliver practical elements of the programme.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

- The weekly quizzes assess knowledge of key principles of phonetic analysis
- The individual project requires students to exercise objective listening skills while transcribing audio data and to explore their understanding of the factors that govern variability. It also requires students to use their knowledge of articulatory and acoustic properties of speech to perform a spectrogram segmentation while taking into account linguistic and social variability in speech.

General Notes

N/A