Course overview
This course will provide students with comprehensive knowledge on both voice source and vocal tract contributions to speech production using speech sound instrumentation. Brief introduction to the vocal tract, airstream mechanisms, states of the glottis; Consonants: voicing, place and manner of articulation; Vowels: vowel quadrilateral, height, front v back, lip-rounding; diphthongs and tripthongs; Broad vs. Narrow transcription and the use of simple diacritics and stress marks; Suprasegmental aspects of speech in English: Prosody; The Physics of Speech: Speech Acoustics; Acoustic Analysis (spectrogram); Develop students' skills in objective assessment focusing on applied issues using speech science instrumentation for analysis of physical parameters of frequency and amplitude. Theories of speech production and psychological aspects of speech perception are also explored e.g. gender identification of voice.
Course learning outcomes
- Apply speech sound principles to clinical practice
- Understand the acoustic properties that contribute to speech rhythm, stress and intonation
- Promote the clinical relevance of acoustic measurement of prosody
- Advance student knowledge on the physics of motion related to the acoustics of sound waves
- Provide basic information on instrumentation including digital data acquisition, microphones, and recording for clinical and research purposes