Research on Phonetics and Phonology

[JacintaEve]

What can someone study about Phonetics and Phonology?
(for a degree)

[Daniel]

At what level? Typically at the undergraduate level you will just be taking classes and learning about existing research (although I would encourage you to participate in research with a graduate student or professor if possible). At the graduate level (either MA or PhD) you would be expected to do some research, and in phonetics and phonology most of the work these days is experimental, but there are hundreds of possible topics so it's hard to give a specific answer. You could also use that knowledge in a specific way, such as doing documentation (focusing on the sound system of a language) or looking at (first or second) language acquisition of phonology, and so forth.

What interests you?

[panini]

I assume you mean "Phonetics and Phonology" referring to that particular sub-field, and not "Phonetics or Phonology, or both". P&P refers to an approach to studying sound systems that treats sounds symbolically (so you don't focus so much on duration, formant frequencies and so on), but which attempts to discover the functional underpinnings of many traditional phonological generalizations. A classical example is the question of why voiceless consonants are more common than voiceless consonants, and a study of the physiology, acoustics and perception of voicing provides an explanation.

There are a huge number of areas that are treated by P&P, and market forces change rapidly to the point that it is unwise to set out to study a specific problem, when in the 6+ post-BA years required to get the terminal degree, things could change and it might prove unwise to invest in a dissertation on duration patterning as a correlate of metrical prominence.

At the undergraduate level, though, it is really unwise to focus on P&P; instead it would be best to learn the fundamentals of phonetics, or phonology, and experimental methodology, and maybe do some small demonstration project such as reporting whether vowel duration in Norwegian monosyllables is significantly influenced by whether the words ends in a vowel, in C, or in CC. (I suggest Norwegian since that experiment may not have been done, whereas for English it has been done to death).

[killer_manatee]

Sorry to bump an old thread, but this is the first I'm hearing of "Phonetics and Phonology" as a name for a specific school of thought. Mind linking to some of the major authors/papers which work in this framework? Google results for Phonetics and Phonology/P&P are unhelpful for obvious reasons.

[panini]

The origins are work by folks like Bruce Hayes, Donca Steriade, Scott Myers, and to some extent Diane Archangeli, Doug Pulleyblank, Jaye Padgett; and from another perspective, work by Louis Goldstein, Janet Pierrehumbert, Mary Beckman. An example of a contemporary warrior in that camp is  Shigeto Kawahara. Unfortunately, there is no official organization or credo, so it can be hard to discern by a Google search. A version of it is also known as "labphon" (that's a term coined by phoneticians)

[killer_manatee]

Ah, like Hayes' Phonetically Based Phonology? I understand, thanks!