Experimental Phonetics

Course Description

Students will work together to design, conduct, and interpret an original experimental study. The particular study will be developed by the class, but will involve acoustic analysis of probabilistic phonetic reduction. The course will be structured as a research project with the following components:

(1) Motivation: students will read several papers around a single topic (phonetic reduction) in order to frame the research project

(2) Predictions: working in groups, students will formulate one or more sets of predictions

(3) Experimentation: working in groups, we will design and conduct one or more experiments

(4) Analysis and Interpretation: we will interpret the results in light of the predictions

Coronavirus guidelines permitting, students will use equipment in the new Computational Phonetics lab in order to conduct experiments. Students should expect to work in collaboration with classmates, and active participation in every stage of the course is required for BN credit. Students interested in writing a paper for an AP can use the class project as the basis for their own project.

This course complements “Quantitative Methods for Linguistic Data: An Introduction to Statistics using R.” Students are encouraged to consider taking both courses simultaneously, though this is not required.

Audience

M.A. and advanced B.A. students with interests in phonology, phonetics, and experimental approaches to linguistics. Especially useful for students intending to write a thesis that uses experimental methods or covers topics related to phonology. Background in phonology/phonetics is recommended.

Literature

There is no textbook for this course. Readings will be provided on Ilias.