Location of The Oxford University Phonetics Laboratory within central Oxford
The Phonetics Laboratory is the phonetics laboratory at the University of Oxford, England. It is located at 41 Wellington Square, Oxford.
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs (phones): their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory perception, and neurophysiological status. Phonology, on the other hand, is concerned with the abstract, grammatical characterization of systems of sounds or signs.
The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in continuous operation. It grew rapidly from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge where they established what became the University of Cambridge. The two 'ancient universities' are frequently jointly called 'Oxbridge'. The history and influence of the University of Oxford has made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to the west and Scotland to the north-northwest. The Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.
The laboratory focusses on experimental tests of linguistic assumptions and empirical linguistics. It provides teaching at the undergraduate and graduate level. Research students in the laboratory are normally reading for a higher degree in Experimental Linguistics, though students from other disciplines touching on the subject of speech are sometimes based in Phonetics.
The Phonetics Laboratory was established in 1980. It occupies the basement of 41 Wellington Square, a mid-Victorian brick building, expanded since. It has experimental areas (sound-insulated recording booths), and general experimental space. The lab also supports signal processing research via software, speech corpora, and processor clusters.
Phonology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic organization of sounds in spoken languages and signs in sign languages. It used to be only the study of the systems of phonemes in spoken languages, but it may also cover any linguistic analysis either at a level beneath the word or at all levels of language where sound or signs are structured to convey linguistic meaning.
Acoustic phonetics is a subfield of phonetics, which deals with acoustic aspects of speech sounds. Acoustic phonetics investigates time domain features such as the mean squared amplitude of a waveform, its duration, its fundamental frequency, or frequency domain features such as the frequency spectrum, or even combined spectrotemporal features and the relationship of these properties to other branches of phonetics, and to abstract linguistic concepts such as phonemes, phrases, or utterances.
Peter Nielsen Ladefoged was a British linguist and phonetician. He was active at the universities of Edinburgh, Scotland and Ibadan, Nigeria 1953–61.
Patricia Ann Keating is an American linguist and noted phonetician. She received her PhD in Linguistics at Brown University in 1980. Since 1980 she has been on the faculty of the Linguistics Department at University of California, Los Angeles. She became a Full Professor and director of the UCLA Phonetics Laboratory in 1991.
Kenneth Noble Stevens was the Clarence J. LeBel Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. Stevens was head of the Speech Communication Group in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), and was one of the world's leading scientists in acoustic phonetics.
Leigh Lisker was an eminent American linguist and phonetician. Most of his career was spent at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a professor and then emeritus professor of linguistics. Dr. Lisker received his A.B. in 1941, with a major in German, his M.A. in 1946, and a Ph.D. in 1949 in linguistics. He was a major figure in phonetics, working both at the University of Pennsylvania and at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, CT, where he was a senior scientist from 1951 until the end of his life. He collaborated with several phoneticians, principally Arthur S. Abramson. He is best known for his work, done mostly in conjunction with Abramson, on voice onset time. Dr. Lisker also made important contributions to Dravidian linguistics, including the book Introduction to Spoken Telugu (Telugu), and did research comparing phonetic and phonological perceptions on the part of linguistically naive and linguistically sophisticated speakers of different native language backgrounds. He conducted such studies in collaboration with Dr. Abramson of the University of Connecticut, Bh. Krishnamurti of University of Hyderabad, India, Adrian Fourcin of University College London, and Mario Rossi of the Institut de Phonétique at the Université de Provence, Aix-en-Provence.
Ignatius G. Mattingly (1927–2004) was a prominent American linguist and speech scientist. Prior to his academic career, he was an analyst for the National Security Agency from 1955 to 1966. He was a Lecturer and then Professor of Linguistics at the University of Connecticut from 1966 to 1996 and a researcher at Haskins Laboratories from 1966 until his death in 2004. He is best known for his pioneering work on speech synthesis and reading and for his theoretical work on the motor theory of speech perception in conjunction with Alvin Liberman. He received his B.A. in English from Yale University in 1947, his M.A. in Linguistics from Harvard University in 1959, and his Ph.D. in English from Yale University in 1968.
Catherine P. Browman (1945–2008) was an American linguist and speech scientist. She was a research scientist at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey and Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut, from which she retired due to illness. While at Bell Laboratories, she was known for her work on speech synthesis using demisyllables. She was best known for development, with Louis Goldstein, of the theory of articulatory phonology, a gesture-based approach to phonological and phonetic structure. The theoretical approach is incorporated in a computational model that generates speech from a gesturally-specified lexicon. She received her Ph.D. in linguistics from UCLA in 1978 and was a founding member of the Association for Laboratory Phonology.
Arthur Seymour Abramson was an American linguist, phonetician, and speech scientist. Abramson was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. He was a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Connecticut, where he was the founding chair, and a Senior Scientist at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of Haskins and is the Secretary of Haskins and its Board. Abramson was best known for his work with colleague Leigh Lisker on voice onset timing. He was also an expert on Southeast Asian Languages and has spent much time working with colleagues in Thailand. His other research interests included experimental phonetics, the production and perception of speech, laryngeal control in consonants, and distinctive tone, particularly in the Thai language. He died on December 15, 2017.
Michael Studdert-Kennedy is an American psychologist and speech scientist. He is well known for his contributions to studies of speech perception, the motor theory of speech perception, and the evolution of language, among other areas. He is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Connecticut and a Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at Yale University. He is the former President (1986–1992) of Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut. He is also a member of the Haskins Laboratories Board of Directors and was Chairman of the Board from 1988 until 2001.
Oxford University Department for Continuing Education (OUDCE) is a department within the University of Oxford that provides continuing education mainly for part-time and mature students. It is located at Rewley House, Wellington Square, Oxford, England.
Junko Itō is a Japanese-born American linguist. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1986 from the University of Massachusetts Amherst under the supervision of Alan Prince. She is currently a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she served as chair of the department from 1999-2006.
The Association for Laboratory Phonology is a non-profit professional society for researchers interested in the sound structure of language. It was founded to promote the scientific study of all aspects of phonetics and phonology of oral and sign languages through scholarly exchange across disciplines and through the use of a hybrid methodology. The founding and honorary members are Amalia Arvaniti, Mary Beckman, Cathi Best, Catherine Browman, Jennifer S. Cole, Mariapaola D'Imperio, Louis M. Goldstein, José Ignacio Hualde, Patricia Keating, John Kingston, D.R. Ladd, Peter Ladefoged, Janet Pierrehumbert, Caroline Smith, Paul Warren and Douglas Whalen. The Association is an international body open to scholars world-wide, and currently has over 100 members.
Jennifer Sandra Cole is a professor of linguistics at Northwestern University. Her research uses experimental and computational methods to study the sound structure of language. She is General Editor of Laboratory Phonology and a founding member of the Association for Laboratory Phonology.
Language And Speech is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes papers in the fields of linguistics, experimental psychology, audiology and speech-language pathology. The journal's editors are Cynthia Clopper and Holger Mitterer. It has been in publication since 1958 and is currently published by SAGE Publications.
Ilse Lehiste was an Estonian-born American linguist, author of many studies in phonetics.
Julia Hirschberg is an American computer scientist noted for her research on computational linguistics and natural language processing. She is currently the Percy K. and Vida L. W. Hudson Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University.
The UCL Division of Psychology and Language Sciences is a Division within the Faculty of Brain Sciences of University College London (UCL) and is located in London, United Kingdom. The Division offers teaching and training and undertakes research in psychology and communication and allied clinical and basic science. It is the largest university psychology department in England.
Patrice (Pam) Beddor is John C. Catford Collegiate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Michigan, focusing on phonology and phonetics.
Ultrasound tongue imaging (UTI) has been used for speech production and linguistics research since it came into regular clinical use in the 1960s and 1970s. It is a non-invasive technique allowing researchers to view the shape, position and movements of the tongue in real time during speech.
