Phonetics: the Study of Speech

Course goals

After finishing this course, students are able to:
1. Describe and explain basic aspects of articulatory and acoustic phonetics (theoretical knowledge).
2. Describe and explain the normal aspects of speech production and speech perception, including basic aspects of speech anatomy and physiology, acoustics and articulation of vowels and consonants, and suprasegmental aspects of speech (theoretical knowledge).
3. Describe and recognize phonetic symbols, transcribe Dutch or British or American English using the International Phonetic Alphabet (practical skills).
4. Perform basic aspects of speech analysis, including speech segmentation, annotation, and measurement and manipulation of acoustic properties of the speech signal. In addition, students will be able to report results systematically, including the production of high-quality figures detailing acoustic results (practical skills).
 

Content

This course offers a first introduction into the study of phonetics: the study of speech, its acoustics, and its perception. Learners will acquire insight into the acoustics, production, perception, and transcription of speech. Special attention will be paid to the principles, basic concepts, and research methods relevant for these areas. In addition, learners will acquire elementary practical skills in the analysis of speech including segmentation, annotation, as well as measurement and manipulation of acoustic properties of the speech signal. This course is intended for first-year students in linguistics, and for everyone with an interest into the study of spoken language in general.   
In this course we will address, amongst others, the following questions:

• What is speech, what are sounds, and what are speech sounds?
• How do we produce speech?
• How do we perceive speech?
• How do we recognize spoken words?
• What are the melody and rhythm of language?
• How do language and speech relate to each other?

Additional information

Please note: the time slot shown here is not yet final and may still be modified until the 3rd Wednesday in September.