Phonetics and phonology

The phonetics and phonology research group (or 'P-group') brings together researchers who are working to understand the phonetics and/or phonology of human language. We combine a broad range of expertise and interests, ranging from acoustic and articulatory phonetics to formal phonological theory, taking in sociophonetics, phonological dialectology, speech recognition and speech synthesis, speech perception, laboratory phonology, historical phonology, and developmental phonology.

We explore these issues from formal, experimental, and engineering perspectives, with interests in synchrony, diachrony, and acquisition. Members of the group work as individuals, in collaboration with each other, and in a number of collaborations with other researchers in Edinburgh and at other universities.

Most members of the group are primarily affiliated with Linguistics and English Language, but others come from elsewhere at the University of Edinburgh (e.g., the Centre for Speech Technology Research and Informatics), or from Speech and Hearing Sciences at Queen Margaret University.

Meetings

The P-group normally meet (our meetings are called the 'Phonetics and Phonology Workshop', or 'P-workshop') on Fridays (but not every Friday) at 12:10pm. For more information (and/or if you'd like to be added to the P-workshop mailing list), email the organisers: Patrick Honeybone, Jeremy Steffman and Oksana Lebedivna.

People

Staff working in this area include:

Image	Research interests
Peter Bell (Informatics)	Automatic speech recognition
Julian Bradfield (Informatics)	Formal phonology; phonology-phonetics interface; click languages; simulations in phonology
Stefano Coretta	Phonetics; phonology; statistics
Benjamin Elie	Acoustics and articulatory models of human speech production
Heinz J Giegerich (Emeritus)	Phonological and morphological theory, especially in relation to English
Lauren Hall-Lew	Sociolinguistics; sociophonetics; phonetic methods; English variation and change; language and ethnicity; language and tourism
Patrick Honeybone	Historical phonology; phonological theory; phonological dialectology; northern Englishes
Christian Ilbury	Sociolinguistics; language variation and change
Pavel Iosad	Theoretical phonology; phonological interfaces; historical phonology; Celtic languages; Germanic languages
Itamar Kastner	Morphology; morphophonology; syntax; semantics
Simon King	Speech recognition; speech synthesis
Bob Ladd (Emeritus)	Intonation and prosody (incl. phonology, phonetics, and paralinguistics); phonology-phonetics "interface" issues; language and music
Catherine Lai	Speech prosody; spoken language understanding; affective computing; semantics; pragmatics; information structure
Warren Maguire	Dialectology; varieties of English/Scots; phonetic and phonological variation and change
Benjamin Molineaux	Prosodic structure and change; phonology and morphology of Mapudungun (isolate, Chile/Argentina); sound-to-spelling mapping, especially in Older Scots
Mits Ota	First and second language acquisition; phonology
Michael Ramsammy	Experimental and theoretical phonology; phonological change; Creole Englishes; articulatory phonetics
Bert Remijsen	Suprasegmental systems: how languages make use of pitch, duration, voice quality, loudness, and to some extent vowel quality
Korin Richmond	Speech synthesis; articulatory data for speech technology; lexicography and pronunciation modelling
Jim Scobbie (Queen Margaret University)	Socio-laboratory phonology; child speech; covert and quasi-phonemic phonological contrast; clinical phonetics; Scottish English; articulatory phonetics; ultrasound analysis of the tongue
Mark Steedman (Informatics)	Computational linguistics; spoken intonation; spoken language processing
Jeremy Steffman	Representations and processes in speech perception; prosody; intonation; (primarily acoustic) phonetics
Alice Turk	Speech production; speech perception; prosodic structure; timing

Postgraduates

Research postgraduates working in this area include:

You can also see what some of our recent postgraduate students worked on:

• Recently submitted PhD theses

Postgraduate Study

We welcome applications from potential postgraduates who would like to join our group:

• PhD and MSc by Research programmes

History

Find out more about the roots of phonetics and phonology research at Edinburgh:

• History of phonetics and phonology at Edinburgh