Phonetics
- Course Code:
- 152900094
- Unit value:
- 0.5
- Year of study:
- Year 2 or Year 3
- Taught in:
- Term 1
Prerequisites
Pre-requisite: General linguistics (152900069) and/or Introduction to Phonology (152900070)
Objectives and learning outcomes of the course
At the end of this course, a student should be able to demonstrate a knowledge of the International Phonetic alphabet, have basic skills in phonetic transcription, understand the main principles of articulation, be familiar with the main acoustic properties of the speech signal, and be able to design and perform very simple phonetic experiments.
Workload
This course will be taught over 1 term (11 weeks) and will consist of a 2-hour lecture and a 1-hour tutorial per week.Scope and syllabus
Phonetics is a central part of linguistic study and forms part of our offerings for the undergraduate programme. This course covers the following:
- The speech chain; phonetics compared to phonology
- Principles of transcription; IPA broad transcription of British English
- Articulation: the organs of speech, vocal anatomy
- Principles of classificatory description of sounds
- airstream mechanisms: egressive vs ingressive; pulmonary, glottalic, velaric
- phonation: modal, breathy, creaky, whisper etc
- vowels and semivowels
- place of articulation
- manner of articulation
- syllables and suprasegmentals: tones, intonation
- IPA and narrow transcription of English, other languages, nonsense words, disordered speech
- Acoustics: Speech pressure waves, sound spectra, spectrograms
- Acoustic description of vowels and consonants
- Non-acoustic experimental phonetics: laryngography/EGG, air pressure
- Making a recording; experimental design, statistics
