Advanced Phonetics

Phonetics is the study of the physical properties of speech.1 The class will focus on three
fundamental questions:

1. How do humans produce and perceive speech sounds?
2. What tools and experimental techniques can we use to investigate speech sounds?
3. What makes a successful phonetics experiment?

To answer these questions, students will study vocal tract anatomy, the physics of speech sounds,
and the interface between phonetics and other linguistic and scientific fields of study. Students will
also gain hands-on experience with Praat, a free software package for speech analysis, to visualize
and interpret phonetic data. Throughout the semester, students will engage with phonetics research
by reading and discussing recent academic papers. The course will culminate in a final project for
which students will propose, design, and conduct original phonetics experiments.

This course fulfills the elective requirement for the linguistics major.