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Ask-A-Linguist - Message details
Subject: Acoustic Phonetic Analysis
Question:
There are certain questions I have concerning Acoustic Phonetic Study since I am a student in this field. They are as follows:

1. What is the scope of doing Acoustic Phonetic Analysis of the vowels or consonants of any of the languages in the world? Would the results of acoustic analysis be used for any purposes?

2. If I do the Acoustic Analysis with the help of softwares like PRAAT or SPEECH ANALYSER, can it be selected for extensive research studies like a Ph.D?

3. Would there be any linguistic significance for such a work?

I would appreciate any tips which would help clarifying my doubts so that I can engage in this research work.

Reply:
Hi, Sam,

Just to add to Madalena's comments:

The main problem with doing acoustic analysis is that there are a large number of parameters which you could study, so you need to understand how the acoustic analysis is derived (which is not easy for many linguists, since the dominant approaches to acoustics are from electrical engineering-based analogies, which are not trivial to relate conceptually to sound acoustics of speech) AND also what relationship the different aspects of acoustic analysis have with the linguistic facts of the language in question. Along with this, you need to take into account the *relative* nature of many of the phenomena, for example, that doing measurements of vowel duration (not always easy to define, either) needs to include some measurement of the rate of speaking being used.

That is, you need to understand many aspects of *linguistics* in order to assure that your research has linguistic and practical relevance. In many cases, the practical uses will guide what you are looking at, but you should also always be guided by the linguistic theory trying to explain the phenomena you are studying.

Jim

James L. Fidelholtz
Posgrado en Ciencias del Lenguaje
Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades
Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, México

Reply From: James L Fidelholtz    click here to access email
Date: Oct-03-2009
Other Replies:
  1. Re: Acoustic Phonetic Analysis Madalena Cruz-Ferreira    (Oct-03-2009)
  2. Re: Acoustic Phonetic Analysis Elizabeth J Pyatt    (Oct-04-2009)
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