SPEECH PRODUCTION AND PERCEPTION

This course is an introduction to the study of speech production and speech perception, targeting first-year students in Linguistics, and other students interested in language and speech. Students get an overview of the most important topics in articulatory and acoustic phonetics, and speech perception. This includes intonation, tempo, and rhythm in spoken language. Questions that come up for discussion are: What is language, what is speech, and how do language and speech relate to each other? What is sound, and what is speech? How are speech sounds generated by the speech organs? What are the physical properties of sound, and how can speech be analyzed, altered, and synthesized using its physical properties? What are speech sounds, and how can we study them? How does the human ear function, and how are speech sounds perceived? What are melody and rhythm in speech, and what role do they play in speech communication? How do listeners recognize spoken words?