Experimenting With Spoken Language

The first part of the course (sessions 1 and 3) will cover an introduction to experimental methods, particularly as used in speech (but not necessarily restricted to speech; students have the freedom to combine other areas of linguistics experimentally for their own work later in the course). We will first try to understand why running experiments can help understanding how communication with speech works (as an alternative to introspective or corpus analysis methods) and we'll learn first steps on how to plan an experiments to maximise the chances for obtaining successful results. Basic concepts of statistics will be introduced/reviewed that form an important part of the planning.

In the second part (sessions 4 to 6) we will learn how to work with speech signals. Basic skills will be acquired with the Praat signal processing software (www.Praat.org). We will record signals, edit them, tag them for ease of analysis, manipulate them and learn about some methods to automatize processes in Praat (scripting).

In the third part of the course we will discuss how to write a publication type lab report and carry this out on a sample experiment (sessions 7 to 10). We will agree on a topic we will work on together in class. In parallel students will chose their own topics they work on individually. During three sessions we will carry out the experimental planning, data and material collection and analysis. I will provide a sample lab report from this experiment as a template for students' individual reports.

In the fourth part (11 and 12) students will present their experimental plans in form of a poster or a talk in class and we will discuss the individual projects.