LING307-20S1 (C) Semester One 2020

Topics in Phonetics and Phonology

30 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 17 February 2020
End Date: Sunday, 21 June 2020
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Friday, 28 February 2020
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Friday, 29 May 2020

Description

This course follows on from second-year phonetics and phonology, covering selected advanced topics and current research in phonetics and phonological theory.

Introduction to Laboratory Phonology

This course builds on second-year work to broaden and deepen your understanding of language sound structure. The aim is to better understand phonology and phonetics through the research methods used in laboratory phonology including experimental data, analysis of corpora, and language modeling. Topics will be organized around representative research articles. This course will also aid in developing your research skills, following your own interests whenever possible.

The course starts with an overview of experimental methods in speech perception, speech production, phonological processing, and meta-linguistic judgments. Analysis of corpora considers both constructed corpora (word lists and dictionaries) as well as corpora of naturally occurring language. Language modeling considers the necessary mechanisms for a "grammar" of language sound structure as a speaker's internal representation of language, or as used in computational linguistics for speech recognition and speech synthesis.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, you will have
1. strengthened your conceptual and practical skills for the analysis of spoken language
2. applied theory to practical tasks, and interpreted practice and data in terms of theory
3. developed conceptual tools and background knowledge required to understand developments in the speech sciences, including appreciation of the range of sources of evidence and the multiple levels of theoretical analysis
4. taken a research issue from concept to hypothesis to experimental design, and/or demonstrated understanding of these issues by critically reviewing relevant literature, thereby strengthening your skills of scientific reasoning, research and reporting; this is useful not only to specialists in the speech sciences and related disciplines and professions, but also to graduates who proceed to other professions
5. written a research report and given illustrated oral presentations about it.

University Graduate Attributes

This course will provide students with an opportunity to develop the Graduate Attributes specified below:

Critically competent in a core academic discipline of their award

Students know and can critically evaluate and, where applicable, apply this knowledge to topics/issues within their majoring subject.

Prerequisites

Restrictions

LING301, LING311

Course Coordinator

Lynn Clark

Lecturer

Stefan Frisch

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage  Description
Homework assignments 30% 5 assignments weekly, beginning week 3.
Presentation draft 15% Three at 5% each. One week before presentation (minimum for feedback)
Research project presentation 15% Weeks 8-10
Project presentation evaluations 15% Three at 5% each. Weeks 9-11
Written research report 25% Due last day of class


You should expect to write up two short lab reports for assessment. Feedback will be given for the first two. If you would like to achieve a better mark, you may, with permission, submit a third report: the best two marks will each contribute 15% to your final grade.

You are also expected to carry out a more sustained piece of research, or project. This can be experimental, where you make stimuli and collect some data, or analytical, in which you make new measurements on existing data, or you could do a more theoretical type of meta-analysis from a literature review. The aim is to allow you to deepen your thinking in your chosen area, and to develop a range of logical and practical skills concerning scientific thinking and its clear communication to others. This experience is intended to be fun and interesting in its own right. In addition, it should provide you with useful transferrable skills relevant to your future professional and personal life. Your project will be assessed in three ways: a written report describing the research you have carried out, normally following standard format for presenting experimental research; and two short oral presentations: in the first of these you present your research plans and will receive feedback and suggestions; the second presents your main findings. Each should be given using powerpoint or equivalent (or possibly a handout). The written report is worth 40% of the course grade and is due at the end of the semester. The oral report plan is worth 10% of the course grade and is given in week 6; the final oral presentation is worth 20% of the course grade and takes place in week 11.

There is no final exam for LING307.

Textbooks / Resources

There is no required textbook for this course. Most reading material will be from journals. It will be recommended on separate handouts, and some will be available in electronic form via Learn.

To access the Learn page for the course, go to www.learn.canterbury.ac.nz, and log in with your usual UC username and password. You will see a menu of the courses you are enrolled in.

Course links

Library portal
The course outline is available on LEARN (only for students enrolled in this course).
LEARN

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $1,553.00

International fee $6,750.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Language, Social and Political Sciences .

All LING307 Occurrences

  • LING307-20S1 (C) Semester One 2020