The last two decades of research on spoken language have shown an enriched awareness of the importance of understanding variation within individuals and across speech communities. For example, speakers can differ in the size of their vocabularies and in the size of their vocal tracts. Both types of difference can affect individual speakers' production and perception of speech, as well as other speakers' processing of their speech productions. The Spring Symposium this year brings together researchers from a broad range of fields for a focused discussion of methods for analyzing variation in production and perception and its effects on processing. There will be three sessions addressing questions about how to explore variation using (1) analyses of speech corpora, (2) results from continuous ratings tasks, and (3) eye-tracking measures.

In each session, the methods will be introduced in the context of work by members of the Research Collective on Sound Size Effects, and discussion will be led by a panel of experts. While the work of the Collective explores effects of variation in vocabulary size and perceived speaker size, the methods are much more broadly applicable, and anyone interested in either the questions or the methods is invited to attend.

For a full description of the three sessions, as well as the invited panelists, please see: Program

If you have questions about the Symposium, please contact the Symposium Committee at springsym AT ling DOT osu DOT edu.