General Phonetics

Linguistics 580
General Phonetics
Spring 2013

General Phonetics

Click on any of the images to hear the sound that it produces.

Louis Goldstein

louisgol@usc.edu

Web Pages (http://sail.usc.edu/~lgoldste/General_Phonetics/)

Hours
Goals
Required Work
Books
Course Outline
Other Information

HOURS

Class:

T Th 11-12:20 GFS 217

Practical session:
1 hour session to be arranged

Practical session will include pronunciation and transcription practice, help with lab exercises.

GOALS

to investigate the structure of speech, "the dance of the tongue," and how it functions linguistically in the languages of the world.
to gain experience with the experimental and computational techniques that are used to investigate speech and its organization. This includes techniques for analyzing speech acoustics and articulation, and for computer synthesis of speech.
to gain practical experience in producing and transcribing speech patterns of any language.

REQUIRED WORK

Weekly (some combination of):

reading
written exercises
listening exercises
laboratory exercises
performance practice

Exams:

mid-term
final
practical: transcription and production

Final Project:
Recording a speaker of a language in order to produce a phonetic description.

BOOKS

Raphael, L., Borden, G, &. Harris, K. (2006). Speech Science Primer. 5th. ed. Baltimore: Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins.

Johnson, K. (2011) Acoustic and Auditory Phonetics. 3nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Ladefoged, P. & Johnson, K. (2010). A Course in Phonetics. 6th ed. Boston, MA: Thomson-Wadsworth.
Includes CD that contains materials and exercises.

Ladefoged, P. and I. Maddieson (1996). Sounds of the Languages of the World. Oxford: Blackwell .

COURSE OUTLINE

(Subject to Change)

Date                Topic                     Reading ( chapters ):

General Introduction

15-24	Jan	Introduction to speech gestures	LJ 1-2
29	Jan	Introduction to transcription
31	Jan	Introduction to acoustics	J 1

Consonants in the languages of the world

5-7	Feb	Initiation mechanisms	LJ 6; LM 3.2; RBH 4
12-19	Feb	Laryngeal gestures and the glottis	LM 3.1; RBH 5
21-28	Feb	Oral constriction gestures	LJ 7 LM 2, 5.1-5.3;6.1;7.1-7.3
5	Mar	Midterm exam

Gestural patterns and phonetic variation

Mar

Gestural organization

LJ 3-4

Vowels in the languages of the world, acoustics, audition & speech perception

12	Mar	Source-Filter theory	J 5.1-5.4
14	Mar	Formants and Spectrograms	LJ 8
26	Mar	Consonants Acoustics & Perception	J 4
28 Mar-	9 Apr	Vowels	LJ 9, J 6, RBH 6
11	Apr	Auditory System	J 3

Prosodic structure

16	Apr	Syllables	LJ 10
18	Apr	Tone & Intonation	LJ 5
23	Apr	Duration
25	Apr	Stress

30 Apr-

2 May

Final Project Presentations

OTHER INFORMATION

Web Pages
There are web pages for the class (http://sail.usc.edu/~lgoldste/General_Phonetics/).

Software
The main software is Praat. It can be downloaded onto your own computer from here (http://www.praat.org). You will need to connect a microphone to your computer and be able to record. if you cannot, you may arrange to do the exercises in the Phonetics Lab.