Wat En Hoe Kan De Experimentele Fonetiek Bijdragen Binnen Het Kader Van De Toegepaste Taalkunde?

Abstract

The respective fields of applied linguistics and experimental phonetics are briefly sketched. From this outline it is clear that the field of applied linguistics encompasses a much vaster research area than experimental phonetics. From this it follows that any collaboration by workers in these two fields can only hope to cover a small area of mutual interest. Attention is given to such notions as theoretical, experimental and applied research in general with a view to getting a realistic insight in a possible meeting ground for phoneticians and applied linguists. Special attention is paid to research objectives and techniques characteristic of the approach of experimental phonetics. Specific themes of current interest in this domain, such as the study of prosodic features and the problem of segmenting words from the speech continuum rather than phonemic segments, are discussed in relation with possible research objectives of a similar kind within the study of foreign language teaching. Although no great hopes for revolutionary developments are held out, a number of possible limited research objectives are suggested which may lead to fruitful joint efforts by enlisting the services of experimental phoneticians towards solving some problems in the field of measuring oral proficiency in foreign language training.