Course description

The primary goals of this course are to provide you with an understanding of the articulatory dimension of speech production and to teach you phonetic transcription. You will learn the mechanisms involved in segmental and suprasegmental speech production. These mechanisms include respiration, phonation, resonation, and articulation. You will be introduced to the topics of acoustic phonetics and human speech perception. You will learn the phonology of speech sounds in American English. In addition, you will learn to phonetically transcribe normal and disordered speech using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The primary emphasis will be on English sounds and their transcription, although description and transcription of sounds in other languages will also be included. We will also spend a fair amount of time learning how to analyze speech sounds acoustically, that is, by means of measuring such speech features as amplitude and frequency. At the end of the course students should be able to interpret spectrograms and other acoustic displays.

Goals

By the end of winter term, students will demonstrate knowledge in the following areas:

anatomical and physiological bases of articulation
description of phonemes of American English
basic description of phonological rules of American English
application of broad and narrow phonetic transcription
spectrographic analysis of American English
transcription of normal and disordered American English and normal speech production in other languages

By the end of this term, you will demonstrate knowledge and understanding of these topics material through performance on three exams, three homework assignments, one lab assignment, and various in-class projects. These four methods of evaluation will be combined to determine your final grade.

Grading Scale:

93 -100 A 73 - 76.99 C

90 - 92.99 A- 70 - 72.99 C-

87 - 89.99 B+ 67 - 69.99 D+

83 - 86.99 B 63 - 66.99 D

80 - 82.99 B- 60 - 62.99 D-

77 - 79.99 C+ 59.99 and below F

Required Text

Ladefoged, Peter. 2006. A Course in Phonetics (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Thomson Wadsworth.

Accompanying website: http://phonetics.ucla.edu/ then click on A Course in Phonetics

Recommended Texts

Johnson, Keith. 2003. Acoustic and Articulatory Phonetics (2^nd ed). Cambridge, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Ladefoged, Peter. 2005. Vowels and Consonants: An Introduction to the Sounds of Languages (2^nd ed). Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Ladefoged, Peter, and Ian Maddieson. 1996. The Sounds of the World’s Languages. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

Evaluation

Final grades are determined on the following basis:

Undergrads
5%	Class participation
25%	Quizzes
25%	Homework
25%	Final exam
20%	Acoustics Project

Class participation. The mark for class participation depends first of all on regular attendance. More importantly it depends on being prepared and actively contributing to class discussion. There will also be in-class, small-group practice with listening and producing sounds. Students are strongly encouraged to work together on all aspects of the course.

· Class attendance Ÿ Preparation Ÿ Active involvement

Homework. Homework exercises will come from the book and other sources. These exercises are turned in, discussed in class, but not graded for correctness. You get credit for just doing them, but neglecting to turn them in will hurt your grade. Each homework is worth 10 points. Any homework turned in late will receive only 7 points. There are 11 possible homeworks due, but the total possible is for 10 (can do 1 for 5 points extra credit or skip one). The exercises in the book are available on the CD and on the website so you should not have to rip the pages from your book to turn them in. The computer labs should be equipped with some IPA font or another in Microsoft Word, but you can download them for free at:

http://www.sil.org/computing/fonts/Lang/silfonts.html

Or here: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/fonts.htm

Quizzes. Quizzes are the graded version of the homework. Students not present for the quizzes will receive a “0”. Excused absences can be arranged around quizzes PRIOR to the quiz date. Quizzes include such tasks as the following:

Ÿ Transcription from a written text Ÿ Transcription of oral stimuli Ÿ Short answer

Acoustics project. You will all be given samples of speech and will have to perform various acoustic analyses on the data. More information regarding this assignment will be distributed in class. You will need to download a free speech analysis program Praat at: www.praat.org – you can save it on your PSU H drive and run the program from there.

Final exam. The exam covers all of the course material and is fairly objective in its nature. It includes performance as well as listening (transcribing) components.

· Course content: Objective true-false, multiple choice, and short-answer questions

· Acoustic analysis: Interpret acoustic displays such as spectrograms and be prepared to make inferences as to the significance of the displays

· Perception: Transcription from oral stimuli provided by instructor

· Production: Students will be expected to produce a set of sounds chosen at random from sounds of the world’s languages

Additional Course Information:

Students with Disabilities. If you are a student with a documented disability and registered with the Disability Resource Center, please contact me immediately to facilitate arranging academic accommodations. Students who suspect that they have a disability but do not have documentation are encouraged to let me know and to contact DRC for advice on how to obtain appropriate evaluation.

Tutoring/Transcription Practice. We have one wonderful teaching assistant for this class. You are encouraged to visit her: to review principles learned in class, to practice transcription, to review for exams. This class goes fast; take advantage of her expert assistance!

Transcription CDs. We have developed a transcription CD so that you can practice transcription on your own. The CD is not required; however, if you would like a copy, please bring $2 and a blank CD and we will make a copy for you. We will also give you a copy of the answer key. Remember: your transcription skills are only as strong as the amount of time you put into practicing them.