B07 Sound patterns in Human Language

B07 Sound patterns in Human Language (Winter 1998)

This was the home page for a course taught at Northwestern University in 1997/98. These pages are not currently maintained, but plans are in the pipeline to revitalize and improve them.

Test yourself on vowel and consonant symbols.

Index

Week 1: Introduction.
- Introduction and organization
- The vocal tract.
- Assignment 0. Due Jan 7th
- Vowels I.
- Vowels 2.
- Assignment 1. Due Jan 12th
Week 2: Consonants.
Week 3: Acoustic phonetics.
- Waves and pressure
- Physical and psychological variables, segmentation
- Segmentation
- Frequency and resonance
- Spectrograms
- Assignment 3. Due Jan 26th (there will be a class handout to accompany this assignment).
Week 4: Phonation. Complex articulation.
- Airstream mechanisms
- Phonation and the glottis
- Assignment 4. Due Feb 9th
  (Note later than usual date! This is midterm day, so get it done earlier if you can.)
Week 5: Stress, tone, and intonation.
Week 6: Introduction to phonology. Phonemic analysis I.
Required reading: Ladefoged, p. 38-44.
Week 7: Phonemic analysis II.
Required reading: Ladefoged, p. 88-96.
Week 8: Morphophonological alternation. Syllables.
Required reading:These web pages. Attend lectures!!
- Morphemes and phonemes
- Syllable structure
- Syllables and rules
- Assignment 6 Due Wednesday, March 4th.
Week 9: Rules and representations.
Required reading:These web pages. Attend lectures!!
- Naturalness, assimilation, dissimilation
- Rule ordering

Some of the material available from the course web pages will include soundfiles. You should make sure that you can listen to these soundfiles by clicking on the speaker button below. You should hear a short text.

This page has been developed by Fred Cummins, Department of Linguistics, 2016 Sheridan Road, to whom all questions should be referred.
Copyright (1998) Northwestern University

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