Learning acoustic phonetics by listening, seeing, and touching

Abstract

There is a huge volume of written textbooks available in virtually every modern field, including acoustic phonetics. However, in areas dealing with acoustics, learners often face problems and limitations when they deal with only written material and no audio or visual information. As one response to this problem, we have developed several sets of physical models of the human vocal tract and have shown that they are extremely useful for intuitive understanding. In addition, we also developed a tool called “Digital Pattern Playback.” Another solution is an online version featuring demonstrations. We are currently collecting materials, mainly in the form of sounds, for educational purposes in acoustics and phonetics and are releasing them as “Acoustic-Phonetics Demonstrations” through our Web site. These demonstrations are designed for students in linguistics, phonetics and phonology, speech pathology, audiology, psychoacoustics, speech engineering, and others. However, potential users are not limited to these groups, as we feel that a wide range of learners can obtain tremendous benefits from the demonstrations, including those who are studying foreign languages or patients undergoing speech articulation therapy. [Work partially supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (24501063) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.]