Doing Phonetics Research

co-taught with Melissa Baese-Berk and Natasha Warner

Despite it’s framing as an introduction to phonetics, this course is not a foundational course for all or any particular area of phonetics, but rather is aimed at having us work through the process of forming an idea, and then working through all of the assumptions and issues which have to get dealt with. Throughout the course, we will llay out some basic and general, foundational concepts, and then have you start supplying the kernels of ideas. Then, each day we will work through crucial issues, such as assumptions about speakers and sampling, production and perception, measuring aspects of behavior and the idea of indices, and finding and interpreting background information on the topic. If all goes well, each student should have the basics of a research project sketched out.