Provides an introduction to the nature of human speech sounds: how they are produced, transmitted and perceived; and how they vary from language to language. Students do a major project where they find a speaker of a language they do not know, record them, and work out the language's speech sounds.

1. Students learn about the nature of speech sounds: how they are produced, transmitted acoustically, and perceived.

2. Students learn how to produce and transcribe a large number of the speech sounds of the world's languages, and how to quantify some important speech acoustics with a computer.

3. Students learn what is involved in working out the sounds of an unknown language.

4. Students learn about Forensic Speaker Identification, and the proper way of evaluating forensic evidence.

Tape Transcription Assignments (30%).  6010 (graduate) students do four language transcription assignments.

4. Transcription Test (15%) A transcription test is held in tutorial in mid course (your tutor reads out ca. 20 words from different languages, you transcribe them phonetically). Please note that, because of the practical emphasis of the course, passing is conditional upon achieving an adequate mark (50%) in this transcription test.  Since transcription ability is taught in the tutorials, attendance at these is crucial.

5. Field-work Analysis (27%) - This is the most important part of the course. Each student chooses a language unknown to them and writes up a description of its sound inventory based on their own transcription of a corpus of data which they elicit and record digitally from a native speaker.  This is to give an idea of how one works out, from scratch, the sounds of a language you start off knowing nothing about. Handouts providing instructions on procedure are made available throughout the course.

6. Field-work transcription (10%) Before starting on the field-work analysis proper, students choose 20 words from the recording of their speaker, and transcribe them phonetically for the lecturer to check.

7. Acoustics assignment (8%) This involves using some of the transcribed material to produce an acoustic vowel plot, or tone plot, using specified software (Praat). If you have access to the internet, you can download Praat now at http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/download_win.html and use that.

8. Class Test  (10%) One short closed-book test on topics covered in lectures and reading is held in tutorials three-quarters of the way thru the course.

Weighting:

Language Transcription Assignments

        6010 students: 4 @  7.5% each .................30%                                 

Transcription Test.............................................15%

Class Test ................... ...................................10%

Initial Fieldwork Transcription (20 words)..... ........10%

Fieldwork Analysis.............  ............ .................27%

Acoustic Analysis................. ...           ................8%