Variability in Speech Production and Perception
Our Project
Our Paris – Cologne Joint seminar on “Variability in Speech Production and Perception” has kicked off more than successfully in October 2021. Together, the students of the Université de Paris and the Universität zu Köln have dived into the seminar’s topic, working in transnational groups over the course of several weeks to deliver linguistic projects inspired by common research interests or cross-language similarities and differences.
Our Aims
The aim of our collaborative, digital teaching project is to create meaningful, long-lasting connections between the two universities involved and especially the individual MA students enrolled in the seminar.
The Linguistics Departments in Cologne and Paris are similar in their orientation towards experimental linguistics and work carried out in the laboratory. Students in both institutions benefit from the experimental expertise and technical research facilities in the labs.
The course itself deals with the interfacing of speech production, perception and cognition, as well as the complexity of speech motor systems and their language-specific coupling to auditory goals. Students from Paris and Cologne will bring their different perspectives on variability of speech production and perception in different languages to the seminar and discuss the relevance of these perspectives for experimental design and data analysis.
We also invited Prof. Douglas H. Whalen (Haskins Laboratories, New Haven USA) and Dr. Georgia Zellou (Associate Professor of Linguistics, UC Davis, USA) as internationally renowned experts to provide us with some unique insights on our topic (find out more under “What We Have Been up to”).
Our Universities and Lecturers
apl. Prof. Dr. Doris Mücke is a professor at the IfL-Phonetics lab in Cologne. Her main research interest lies in the area of experimental phonetics and laboratory phonology, focusing on dynamic modelling of tones and articulatory gestures with respect to prosodic structure. She is also doing research on speech motor networks and movement disorders with neurologists at UoC.
Dr. Simon Roessig is a researcher working in the fields of phonetics and phonology. His research interests include prosody, the relationship between phonetics and phonology, or more generally, the relationship between discrete and continuous aspects of cognition, as well as gestural models of speech production.
The University of Paris is France’s leading multidisciplinary university. It covers a wide range of disciplines, with one of the most comprehensive and ambitious educational offerings available in the world.
Prof. Dr. Ioana Chitoran works at the interface between phonology and phonetics. Her main interest is in understanding the relationship between the temporal variability observed in speech and the emergence of phonological structure and phonological representations.
Variablity in Speech Production and Perception: Proceedings
Our project has put together virtual conference papers which document the outcome of the transnational seminar between Cologne (Universität zu Köln, IfL Phonetics) and Paris (Université de Paris): "Proceedings of the international Paris-Cologne seminar on Variability in Speech Production and Perception". In international groups, the experiments themselves were planned and possible outcomes were derived based on research literature and hypotheses; however, they were not carried out in the real world of experimental linguistics – not yet.
Coming soon…
April 2022
Proceedings of the Paris-Cologne Joint Seminar on “Variability in Speech Production and Perception” - Collection of students' group project proposals
Summer 2022
Exchange trip to Paris
