How do speakers and listeners encode and decode their thoughts and intentions and transfer and receive these so effortlessly? The problem is a complex one.
The human vocal tract is specially adapted to produce speech sounds. We can use the vocal folds to produce voicing for speech production. Voice is one of the most powerful perceived aspects of personal identity, but is difficult to define, categorize or synthesize. Real-time speech, produced with this voice, flouts most of the rules to which written text conforms. Indeed, most of us do not even speak in complete sentences. Despite this, normal speech is comprehensible to the normal listener, who will often go to extraordinary trouble to extract the intended message from the acoustic signal that we produce.
In this course, by linking the subjects of anatomy, physiology, acoustics, aerodynamics, articulation, psychology and linguistics, we address the interdisciplinary subject of speech production and perception. The course has a strong emphasis on laboratory work, and through a series of experiments carried out in a speech lab environment, we provide the student with a theoretical and practical training in setting up and carrying out empirical research.
Format
The first session will be a lecture on the weekly topic, and after the second week, the second session will generally be a related laboratory session.
Lab session topics will include a selection of the following: fundamental frequency manipulations; manipulating source characteristics; f1/f2 charts, spectrographic characteristics of phonetic categories; spectrographic illustration of coarticulation; synthesis of different language-specific features, voice, segment, word, gender, and accent manipulation; forensic analysis; categorical perception and formant transitions; McGurk effect and tone masking; measuring speech intelligibility in noise for native and nonnative speakers of English; factors affecting duration in running speech.
At the end of the course, the students will write and present a research paper in journal form where descriptive work is carried out using standard analysis techniques in laboratory production exercises, allowing for the drawing of inferences on the mental organization of language. A list of topics will be provided by the instructor.
Students may come with their own topic and a clear plan, but this must first be approved by the instructor. For the group presentation, each group compiles a short reader with relevant readings or summaries to be distributed to the class before the seminar-style final presentation.
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