Laboratory phonology

1.          Introduction

Research in Laboratory Phonology focusses on relating phonological theory to primary empirical data. These data are gained using experimental methods, as opposed to the more traditional techniques of data-gathering (e.g. transcriptions, native speaker judgements etc.). Even though researchers in Laboratory Phonology do not subscribe to a common phonological framework, they agree on the goal of "strengthening the scientific foundations of phonology through improved methodology, explicit modelling, and cumulation of results"     

2.          A research in Laboratory phonology

•    The title of this research--IViE 
  

•    The researcher--Esther Grabe
  She is a Research Fellow in the Phonetics Laboratory at the University of Oxford. Her research interests include the cross-varietal and cross-linguistic modelling of prosody, variation in intonation, speech rhythm and the role of prosody in comprehension.
  

•    The aim of this research
  IViE stands for 'Intonational Variation in English', and is pronounced like the woman's name 'Ivy'. IViE is based on ToBI, the current standard for prosodic labelling of English intonation (Silverman et al. 1992, Beckman and Ayers, 1997), but unlike the original ToBi, IViE allows for directly comparable transcriptions of several varieties of English in a single labelling system. Additionally, IViE transcriptions capture rhythmic differences between varieties, and differences in phonetic realisation.
  

•    The corpus used in this research 
  http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/~esther/ivyweb/search.html

•    How to use this corpus
  We can have nine varieties, namely nine places, to choose from.
  Then, we decide on the sex and the speaking style of the subject.  
  
  For example, let's decide on a male in Belfast who is tested by speaking a sentence.
  After keying in the three entries, we can enter the list of files.
  Take a look at the first one.  It is named "w1bdo".
  "w" means a wh-question.
  "1" means the first question of the three.
  "b" means the initial of Belfast.
  "do" mean the initials of the speaker.   
  
  
  There are nine varieties to investigate.

  Belfast

  Bradford

  Cambridge

  Cardiff

  Dublin

  Leeds

  Liverpool

  London

  Newcastle

  
  There are five speaking styles in total

  sentences

  Passage

  Retold

  Map task

  Free conversation

  
         In the first part of sentences, there are five different types.  There are several   different choices with each type. (The Stimuli (texts))
  
  
• The findings of the researcher
   

3.          The on-line videos on language variation
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