Phonetics Laboratory
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Introduction and interests
Staff and Contacts
Facilitites
Teaching
Research Projects
Conferences
Introduction and Interests
The phonetics laboratory was established in 1988, and moved to its current site in the Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics in 2000. The laboratory is multi-purpose in nature and is the focus for phonetics teaching, speech science and laboratory phonology research in the Department. The laboratory has collaborative links within the University of Melbourne, namely, Psychology, Cognitive Science, ESL, French and Italian Studies, and with other Linguistics and Speech Departments in Australia and overseas (Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, Flinders University, IPDS Kiel University, Germany).
Research interests in speech science and laboratory phonology include
- Modelling intonation and prosody of Australian English
- Intonation of Australian languages
- Coarticulation in Australian languages
- Phonetics / Phonology interface
- Forensic phonetics
You may contact us about
- Transcription needs
- Speaker identification
- Accent awareness
Staff and Contacts
Associate Professor Janet Fletcher, Senior Lecturer in Phonetics and Phonology
Address:
Rooms 504 / 505, Level 5
Arts Centre Buiding
Corner of Swanston and Grattan Sts
The University of Melbourne 3010
Facilities
The Phonetics Lab is equipped with the following:
Research Systems:
Signal Processing & Acoustics
- EMU Labeller & EMU/R (Win)
Database management system for acoustic and articulatory phonetics- Pitchworks (Win)
Multi-tiered, prosodic labeling with automatic pitch and intensity calculation- HLSyn (Win)
Speech Synthesizer- Praat (Win and OS X)
Signal processing system – acoustic phonetics (interfaced with EMU/R)- ESPS / WAVES+ & S-PLUS (Solaris)
Statistics (limited use)
Physiology
- Articulate Assistant (Win)
with Electropalatograph (EPG-3)
speech recording and analysis software designed to read,annotate, analyse and print EPG files- PC Quirer (Win)
interfaced with:
Separate Oral and Nasal masks (calib for pressure and flow)
Rotthenberg mask (oral and nasal airflow)
Laryngograph (Lx)- Kay DSP 5500 Sonograph (Win)
real time pitch extraction / spectrographic analysis- Kay Visipitch (Win)
pitch, amplitude, and spectrographic analysisRecording & Digitizing
Recording Equipment:
- Marantz Flash Recorders
- studio grade and portable DAT recorders
- studio grade and portable cassette recorders
- various reel to reel recorders
- high-end minidisk recorder
We are currently investigating using 60GB G5 ipods interfaced with external microphones capable of recording at 44kHz stereo as an alternative, light-weight solution to recording out in the field.
Digitizing:
Databases & Corpor
- All workstations interfaced with Edirol UA-1 (USB – audio input converters)
SoundStudio (OS X)
Audacity (Win and OS X)
Transcriber (Win)
- ANDOSL
- Brown & Lobb
- ICAME Hit Centre
Acoustics & Physiology Research Lab:
A Dedicated Workstation and Laptop using an EDIROL USB audio interface have been set up with the following allowing physiological measurements to be recorded at any time both in the lab and in the field.
- HLSyn (Speech Synthesizer)
- Articulate Assistant
- EMU / R
- Pitchworks
- Audacity (transcription)
- PC Quirer interfaced with:
- Electropalatograph (EPG-3)
- Oral and Nasal masks (calibrated for pressure and flow)
- Rotthenberg mask (oral and nasal airflow)
- Laryngograph (Lx)
Rack Mounted (demonstration purposes only):
- Kay DSP 5500 Sonograph
- Kay Visipitc
Infastructure:
Each machine in the Phonetics Lab is connected directly to the internet via a 10/100MBS cable
We are currently considering upgrading to a dedicated Gigabit switch.
Servers:
- 2Ghz dual processor G5 X-Serve with 2.2TB RAID
providing:
- File serving within the lab
- Quicktime Streaming (MP-3 & 4) to the broader community
(under development)- Sun Blade 100
Teaching programs in Phonetics
2nd / 3rd year core subject that covers phonetic theory with particular emphasis on the articulatory mechanisms governing speech production, development of practical phonetic skills, and training in spectography.
2nd / 3rd year core subject that examines developments in phonological theory and provides students with training in formal phonological analysis.
3rd / 4th year course that focuses on the major acoustic and articulatory techniques of experimental phonetics research.
175-525 Pronunciation of the Spoken Language
Masters course that focuses on the phonetics and phonology of spoken English.
Research Projects
Funded Research Projects
- Consonant Articulation in Australian Langauges
Investigator: Janet Fletcher, Andy Butcher, Flinders University
Funding: Australian Research Council (ARC) - Modelling Prosody of Australian English
Investigator: Janet Fletcher
Funding: Australian Research Council (ARC) - Yiwarruj, yinyman, radbiyi Ida mali: Iwaidja and other endangered languages of the Coburd Peninsula (Australia) in their cultural context
Investigators: Nick Evans, Hans-Jurgen Sasse, Janet Fletcher, Bruce Birch, Linda Barwick, Murray Garde and Kin Akerman
Funding: Volkswagen Foundation, DoBeS Program (Dokumentation der Bedrohter Sprachen).
Student Research Projects - Examples
- "A Prosidic Analysis of Iwaidja, a Language of Northern Australia"
Bruce Birch (phD) - "An Accoustic Phonetic Investigation into Raddoppiamento Sintattico in Sienese Italian"
Mary Stevens (PhD) - "An Articulatory and Acoustic Study of Consonants in the Northern Australian Language Bininj Gun-Wok"
Hywel Stoakes (PhD) - "An Acoustic Phonetic Study Concerning Coarticulation and Coarticulation Resistance in Three Australian Languages "
Simone Graetzer (PhD) - "A Sociocultural Comparison of Adolescents' Australian English accents in Melbourne"
Brian Fricker (MA Research) - "Investigation of the Stop Contrast in Ganalbingu, a language from NorthEast Arnhem Land" Zoe Lake (Honours)
Recent Completions:
- "A Forensic Phonetic Investigation into the Speech Patterns of Identical and Non-identical Twins"
Debbie Loakes (PhD) - "Tone acquistion by Cantonese children with Cochlear Implants"
Johanna Barry (PhD) - "Intonation and prosody in two dialects of Bininj Gun-wok: an autosegmental-metrical analysis"
Judith Bishop (PhD) - "Modeling the Intonation of Lebanese Arabic Using the Autosegmental Framework: A comparison With English"
Dana Chahal (PhD) - "Connected speech processes and consonant articulation in Australian English and in English spoken by Japanese learners of English"
Chie Hama (MA Research) - "Golin Tone: An Investigation into the Intonation and Tone of Golin, a Language from the Simbu Region in Papua New Guinea"
Hywel Stoakes (Honours) - "The polysemy and prosody of some: descriptive and theoretical contributions on some and certain in English and Swedish spontaneous speech”
Erich Round (MA Research)" - "The Phonological / Grammatical Mismatch in the Dalabon Word: A Phonetic Study"
Bella Ross (Honours) - "The change in the Australian English accent over three generations"
Bryan Fricker (Honours) - An Acoustic Phonetic Study of Coarticulation in two Australian Languages: Consonant-Vowel and Vowel-to-Vowel Coarticulation in Arrernte and Burarra "
Simone Graetzer (Honours)
Conference Papers
A selection of recently presented papers by member of the phonetics laboratory:
The 3rd International Conference on Speech Prosody (2006) Dresden, Germany
- Janet Fletcher and Debbie Loakes “Intonational variation in adolescent conversational speech: rural versus urban patterns”
- Mary Stevens and Nicole Kruspe “Register in Mah Meri: a preliminary phonetic analysis”
Blackwood-By-The-Beach: Australian Languages Workshop (2006)
- Hywel Stoakes “The stop contrast in Bininj Gun-Wok: an acoustic phonetic analysis”
Australian Linguistic Society Conference (2005) Melbourne, Australia
- Janet Fletcher and Debbie Loakes “Uptalk in regional Victorian English”
Interspeech: 9th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (2005) Lisbon, Portugal
- Janet Fletcher “Compound rises and “uptalk” in Australian English”
- Mary Stevens and John Hajek “Spirantization of /p t k/ in Sienese Italian and so-called semi-fricatives”
The 10th Australian International Conference on Speech Science & Technology (2004) Sydney, Australia
- Janet Fletcher, Nick Evans and Bella Ross “Pausing strategies and prosodic boundaries in Dalabon”
- Mary Stevens and John Hajek “A Preliminary Investigation of Some Acoustic Characteristics of Ejectives in Waima'a: VOT and Closure Duration”
- Mary Stevens and John Hajek “Comparing voiced and voiceless geminates in Sienese Italian: what role does preaspiration play? ”
- Mary Stevens and John Hajek “How pervasive is preaspiration? Investigating sonorant devoicing in Sienese Italian”
- John Hajek and Mary Stevens “Tonal activity in Kara, an Austronesian language spoken in New Britain”
- Bryan Fricker “The change in Australian English vowels over three generations”
- Debbie Loakes and Kirsty McDougall “Frication of /k/ and /p/ in Australian English: Inter- and Intra-Speaker Variation”
- Debbie Loakes “Front Vowels as Speaker-Specific: Some Evidence from Australian English”