Phonetics II (a.k.a. Introduction to Laboratory Phonology) has several functions in the linguistics curriculum. It originated as an intermediate-level course in the phonetics course series, to provide a transition between the graduate introduction to phonetic theory (Ling. 600.01) and the advanced seminar in phonetics (Ling. 825). However, it was intended from the beginning also to serve as a research methods course for students in other areas of linguistics who are interested in using computational models, speech corpora, and laboratory experiments to build and to evaluate research aimed at improving our understanding of phonology -- i.e., of what adults in different speech communities know of the forms of words and larger utterances, of the relationship of this knowledge to the human capacity for speech production and perception, of how this knowledge is acquired or modified in the course of language acquisition and language change. The course objectives are to develop several essential skills relevant to understanding and doing research of this kind. To this end, the course work will include doing five extended "labs" on different topics in order to become acquainted with a range of methods and computational resources, reading and discussing an assigned article, finding and reviewing other articles that are related to each topic, and developing a proposal for a personal research project that could be carried out in a later quarter and/or submitted to a funding agency.
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 3:30-5:18, Jennings Hall 50.
Mary E. Beckman
office: room 25 Oxley
email: mbeckman@ling.osu.edu
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We will cover five general topics, taking two weeks to cover each one. Much of the coursework is organized around these topics, and it has four components.
First, there are articles to read and discussion points to think about in relationship to each topic. You should read the articles as early as possible - before the first class meeting when we will start covering a topic (except, of course, for topic 1, which we will start in the first class meeting). We will keep a running list of discussion points for each topic, and we will take turns being the "organizer" - i.e., the people who are responsible for keeping track of the discussion points for a topic. For most of the class meetings devoted to a topic, being the organizer means presenting the first paper assigned to the topic and leading the discussion of that article as well as trying to keep on top of how all of articles that others find relate the topic.
Second, for each topic, each of you should find and post (citation and/or link to) at least one other article that is of interest to you and related in some way to the topic being covered. This component of the coursework is intended to help you develop your skills in searching the literature for work that is potentially related to your research question and then skimming abstracts, etc., to evaluate the relevance of each article that you find.
Third, there is also a laboratory assignment for each topic, with a written report due before the last class meeting associated with the topic. A lab assignment typically will involve using software that you can download onto your home computer to acquire some basic laboratory or modeling skill, and the specifications for the report will usually include a short essay, to relate the lab work to the issues covered in the discussion and readings. The description of the assignment and specifications for the report will be made available in the first or second class meeting devoted to the topic, so that you have at least a weekend to work on the lab. In general, if you have questions about the assignment, you should ask them in class, so that others can hear my explanations and (equally important) so that the questions can become part of the discussion points for the topic when appropriate. The final written report for each lab is due in my mailbox in 222 Oxley by 5:30 p.m. on the Wednesday of the second week that we will be covering the topic, so that we can go over the reports in class on the last day devoted to the topic.
Fourth, you each will choose a topic to develop into a more extended experiment, corpus study, or other research project. Over the course of the quarter, you will develop this topic by doing a more extensive literature search and then developing a more specific research design that you can describe in a "mini grant proposal" at the end of the quarter.
The final grade will be based on your: