Lecture Notes

Abbreviation Key

This course is taught by five instructors, each of which is responsible for certain lecture sessions, as shown in the table below. Please consult the following key for instructors' names:

EF = Edward Flemming
DG = David Gow
SS = Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel
DS = Donca Steriade
KS = Ken Stevens

Lecture Notes

Please note that handouts are not available for every lecture session.

SES # LECTURERS TOPICS SUBTOPICS
1 KS Course overview (PDF)

a. Distinctive features; phonological evidence and evidence from production, acoustics and perception; articulator-free features and articular-bound features

b. Basics of acoustics of speech production: acoustic sources from airflow, filtering of sources by the vocal tract

c. Some basic anatomy: breathing, lungs, larynx, oral tract, nasal cavities

d. Basics of hearing; hearing for speech

e. Air flow and its control in speech production

f. Introduction to quantal theory, enhancement
2-3 KS

Features for vowels and sonorant consonants

Lecture 2 (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF - 1.3 MB)

Lecture 3 (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF 1) (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF 2) (PDF 3)

a. Vowel systems, relation between acoustics and articulation; vowel nasalization, glottal source for vowels

b. Waveform displays, spectrum displays, spectrograms

c. Sonorant consonants; glides, liquids, nasals
4 DS Why features

a. Learning phonology with distinctive features (PDF - 1.3 MB)

b. Inferring features

c. Natural classes (PDF - 1.0 MB)
5 DS Feature values in lexical entries (PDF)

a. Experimental evidence for under specification

b. Evidence for under specification in lexical access vs. phonological evidence
6 DS Features vs. contrasts Phonological relevance of non-contrastive features: release, syllabicity, timing
7 EF, DS

Features vs. contrasts (cont.)

EF notes (PDF)

DS notes (PDF)

a. Syllable structure

b. Contrast as an alternative theory of features
8 EF Lexical neighborhood, frequency, predictability, effects on production and perception  
9 EF, DS Theories of speech perception

a. Objects of speech perception

b. Models of speech perception - relation to lexical access, the role of 'intermediate' representations, Nearey's typology of intermediate representations
10 DG Context effects  
11 DG Normalization  
12 DG Feature-cue integration and assimilation (PDF)  
13-14   Student presentations