Phonetics Lab

A list of current or proposed research projects in the Phonetics Lab by our research group.

Research

Ultrasound Project

Lab members Heike Lehnert-LeHouiller and Joyce McDonough in collaboration with colleagues in BME BioMedical Engineering, are setting up an ultrasound project for collecting and analyzing data on tongue movement during speech. BME collaborators include: Steven McAleavey, Mathews Jacob, Diane Dialecki.

Nasality in Vowels

A research project investigating the perception and production of nasality in vowels. Collaborators include Michael Berger, Meghan Clayards, Neil Bardhan, Heike Lehnert-LeHouiller and Joyce McDonough.
Publications, conference papers, presentations
• Michael A. Berger, 2008 "Measurement of vowel nasalization by multi-dimensional acoustic analysis" WLS:UR 4.1
• M. Berger, M. Clayards, N. Bardhan, & J. McDonough. June 2006. 'An automated measure of nasality over time in vowels'. JASA 119 (5), 3338 (A)

Language and Music

Collaboration between Joyce McDonough and jazz pianist Harold Danko, Eastman School of Music (ESM), investigating the relationship between rhythm in speech and music.

This colllaboration is part of the larger Sound and Music Initiative under development at the University, involving College faculty in Engineering, BCS, Linguistics, Music and faculty from the Eastman School of Music, with the intent of developing curriculum and facilitating research among faculty and students in Music Cognition, Music Engineering, Language and Music.

Language fieldwork: Phonetic documentation

Those interested in the phonetic documentation of indigenous speech communities should contact Joyce McDonough.

Athabaskan

• Navajo
• Northern Dene
with Sally Rice and Val Wood
• Jicarilla Apache
with Melissa Axelrod and Wilma Phone

Sino-Tibetan

• Sherpa tone with Michelle Gregory

Speech Group

A weekly or biweekly meeting of members of the CLS community interested in speech research, for the purpose of discussion and readings. If you are interested in this group, please contact Joyce McDonough or Heike Lehnert-LeHouiller.

Equipment and software

main software on three Intel Macs
• Microsoft Office
• SPSS
• R
• Matlab



Dell running Kay Elemetrics CLS for Phonetic Database, realtime spectrogram
Linguistics Department: 2 portable macBooks, portable projector

sound and image editing
• Photoshop
• Final Cut Pro
• Waveform editor, Sound studio
• freeware imaging (NIH Image)

various freeware from Praat, MPI-PL Tools, LaTeX
fonts: Henry Rogers' IPAPhon, SIl fonts

recording: portable Marantz PDM 660, Tascam digital, microphones
tape copying, format conversion and other services available at MutliMedia Center.




Ultrasound is housed in Steven McAleavey's lab in BME


equipment for airflow collection: Macquirer SciConRD

Data back up, removable drives
.

Rochester Center for Brain Imaging (RCBI). Other special resources, such as MRI machines, are available for research use in the RCBI through the membership of Linguistics in CLS. The RCBI includes a research-dedicated state-of-the-art 3T magnet equipped for conducting fMRI during a wide range of cognitive and perceptual tasks.

If you are interested in speech research using MRI technology, please contact Joyce McDonough or Richard Aslin, Director, RCBI.