Introduction to the Phonetics Laboratory

In the year 1950, a phonetic experiment group, one of the subgroups of the Second Research Group, was set up along with the founding of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, based on the former Laboratory of Speech Sounds and Music Temperament, Research Institute of Arts, Peking University. It was this very group which ultimately grew into the Phonetics Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) today.

Equipments at that time included various types of rymographs, tone inference scales of yiyi (乙一) and yi'er (乙二) models, tuning forks, tubal continuous-pitch producers, wire recorders and etc.

In late 50s,the acoustic analysis instruments like pitch meter, oscillograph, and sonograph were acquired to study the acoustic features of SC (Standard Chinese) vowels and consonants; palatography was designed and made to analyze vowels and consonants from a biological perspective with the cooperation of X-ray photography; and pitch indicator was designed to study SC tone .

The study of this period was focused on static analysis of sounds. The achievements were collected in Experimental Records of SC Sounds (five volumes, unpublished) and The Articulatory Spectrograph of SC (Zhou Dian-fu and Wu Zong-ji, Commercial Press,1963 ), The current phonetics lab of the Institute of Linguistics in Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was founded in 1978.The faculty were enlarged and the equipment was augmented , as well as the new sonagraph and computers were installed. The study focus was put on systematic analysis of dynamic features of sounds and sound synthesis including the synthesis of biological rules and rules of acoustic parameters. The chief research achievements are The Spectrographic Album of Mono-syllables of SC (eds. by Wu Zong-ji , 1986), Essentials of Experimental Phonetics (Advanced Education Press ,1989), Contemporary Phonetic Fundamental Knowledge (People’s Education Press ,1990), Technique of Sound Synthesis of SC Geared to Acoustics (Social Science Press ,1994) ,and the establishment of synthetic system of SC mono-syllables together with the synthetic experiment of bi-syllables based on the system.

Besides, a number of research reports and academic papers have been compiled into Reports of Phonetic Research (fourteen volumes from 1988 to 2007) [Rpp-Il(CASS)/1990…], or have been published in core professional periodicals at home and abroad and proceedings of international academic conferences.

Under the influence of Mr. Wu Zongji, in the recent years, we have further strengthened communication and cooperation with phoneticians abroad, and hosted successfully several international conferences on frontier issues, such as the Sino-French Symposium on Speech and Language Processing in 2002, the International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages: Emphasis on Tone Languages in 2004, the Eighth Phonetic Conference of China and the International Symposium on Phonetic Frontiers in 2008, and etc., introducing new findings and future directions in phonetic study, providing important platforms for the development of phonetic research in China.

In the year 2002, supported by the Key Discipline Program of CASS, the establishment of the Key Discipline of Phonetics and Spontaneous Speech was announced. Rooted in the Phonetics Laboratory and the Contemporary Linguistics Group, this discipline combines the basic and theoretical research in phonetics and linguistics with the development and application of speech engineering, and took spontaneous speech processing and application of speech engineering and issues in study of syntax, meaning and pragmatics as research objects. In the recent six years, the lab has hosted or co-hosted three key projects sponsored by the National Social Science Foundation (excellent level in final assessment), three projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation, three projects sponsored by the National 863 high-tech program, one project sponsored by the National 973 high-tech program, several cooperating projects sponsored by the Ministry of Education, and a great number of horizontal cooperational projects with research centers home and abroad.

The fields of study mainly undertaken by members of our laboratory includes:
(1) Physiological phonetics, searching for relationships between speech sounds and movements of speech organs gotten by various physiological instruments, and the mechanism of speech production in general;
(2) Speech psychology of infants, searching for psychological and cognitive mechanisms in infants' production and perception of speech and speech sounds;
(3) Acoustic phonetics, focusing on the study of stability and range of variation of various phonological categories, acoustic properties of prosodic and superasegmental elements, and paralinguistic phenomena in spontaneous speech;
(4) Speech sound acquisition in SLA (Chinese' learning of English and foreigners' learning of Chinese);
(5) Phonetic comparison between local accent Chinese and Standard Chinese;
(6) Speech synthesis of minority languages;
(7) Building and labeling of speech corpora.

The faculty of the lab is composed of seven senior research members and two intermediate research members, among whom there are one director of doctorial students and three directors of postgraduates. The lab is installed with various sound analysis equipment and experimental methods, and owns its specific recording room and identification room. We are now applying for being one of the key labs of CASS.

In 2004 and 2005, we hosted two times the National Summer Institute of Phonetics and Speech Sciences, in order to improve the scientific study of speech sounds in our country. Basic courses in phonetics and speech engineering were provided, including general phonetics, physiological phonetics, acoustic phonetics, speech signal coding, speech synthesis, speech recognition, speech amplification, voiceprint speaker recognition, and special seminars on modern phonetics. Internationally renowned scholars were invited to host discussions and lectures. Totally about 200 students from various disciplines, such as phonetics, dialectology, teaching Chinese as a foreign language and foreign language teaching, from Hong Kong, Taiwan, the USA, Canada, South Korea, and across the mainland China, attended the Institute.

Postgraduates have been taken on from the year of 1978 and doctorial students from 1996. In recent years, the lab enrolled new students each year majoring in experimental phonetics (mainly, physiological and acoustical phonetics) or related disciplines in humanities and sciences. We also welcome scholars in related fields to do post-doctoral researches in our lab.

Telephone: +86-010-65237408, 85195394
FAX:010-85195396
E-mail: liaj@cass.org.cn
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