Final exam and lab exercise

There are two major parts of the course grade remaining: the final exam and the final lab exercise.

Lab exercise

The lab exercise, which is worth 20% of the grade, will be done in the phonetics lab during the final exam period. There will be a choice of times you can sign up for. You will hear a sentence spoken by 2 or 3 people with different accents, and transcribe it for each speaker. You may not use any kind of notes for this exercise, so it is important to have the symbols and their meanings memorized. You will have the opportunity to do several practice transcriptions of this kind as homework. You will receive specific instructions on how narrow the transcription needs to be (i.e., which kinds of allophonic details like aspiration need to be included.)

Final exam

The final exam is worth 40% of the grade. The following are the skills you are expected to be able to show.

This list is tentative and I reserve the right to change it in the coming weeks, depending on what we get through in class.

Broad transcription from memory You will be given a set of words taken from the list of the most common English monosyllables. For each word, you must give a broad transcription. For example, peace is pronounced [pijs]. In this transcription you do not need to show allophonic details. The important thing is to know which consonants and vowels each word is composed of. You can choose whether to give transcriptions of the GAE or RP pronunciations (but you must do all one dialect or all the other).
Identify mid-sagittal section As in the first homework, be able to identify from a drawing of the vocal tract which sound is being produced.
Read spectrogram Be able to answer questions about a spectrogram (to be covered in week 10). For example, you should be able to tell if a vowel is high or low, back or front from its formants; whether a consonant is a plosive, fricative, or nasal; whether a sound is voiced or voiceless. This problem will probably be multiple choice.
Label mid-sagittal section On a drawing of the vocal tract, be able to label all of the articulatory organs / spaces we have covered, such as the alveolar ridge, hard palate, velum, uvula, pharynx, glottis, oral cavity, nasal cavity, lips, and teeth.
Identify phonetic symbols You should know the diacritics for all of the phonetic features we have covered, such as dental, pharyngealized, velarized, palatalized, long, nasalized, primary and secondary stress, aspirated, unreleased, voiceless, syllabic. You should also know the symbols of the Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, and English sounds we covered, and the articulatory descriptions of the sounds (i.e., [q] is a voiceless uvular plosive). All of these symbols are found on your IPA chart. You may be given a symbol and asked for the name of the phonetic feature(s) it indicates, or vice versa.
Short answer Be able to answer a comprehension question on an articulatory or acoustic topic covered in the lectures. For example, what is voice onset time and how does it distinguish aspirated and unaspirated plosives?