Conference: LabPhon 15 - Speech Dynamics and Phonological Representation

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

Speech sounds form the building blocks of spoken languages. Sounds are combined into words, but languages have different rules regarding how sounds can be combined. Sometimes sounds change in complicated ways, depending on other sounds in a word. Languages have different patterns for changing sounds as well. Of the roughly 7000 languages remaining in the world, these rules and patterns have been studied in only a handful, and our understanding of why such rules and patterns exist is incomplete. Extending traditional methods of describing and documenting speech sounds, Laboratory Phonology is an approach that incorporates a rich array of experimental methods and interdisciplinary approaches to understanding human speech sounds as the building blocks of language as part of a linguistic, cognitive, and communicative system. Four of the last five Conferences in Laboratory Phonology (LabPhon) have been hosted outside of the US, and Cornell's Department of Linguistics will bring the conference back to the US, July 13-16, 2016, with the theme of Speech Dynamics and Phonological Representation. This conference will bring together not only phonologists and phoneticians, but also researchers from other subfields and allied fields including psycholinguists, sociolinguists, clinical linguists, L1 & L2 acquisitionists, computer scientists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists and others with an interest in the nature of speech. These scholars and students from around the world will share recent advances in our understanding of the sound systems of human language. LabPhon15 will focus on increasing the participation of graduate students and early-career scholars in the LabPhon research community, and will strengthen the visibility of outstanding research done by women scholars.