FAW: Experimental and Computational Studies of Word Phonology

Janet Pierrehumbert博士将使用NSF学院的资助 妇女奖计划，以追求她的研究在关键的 语音学和音系学之间的界面， 语音的性质及其抽象心理 表示。 她的研究重点将是 单词在句子中产生时的语音， 特别注意音节相邻的限制， 话语层面语调轮廓与词汇的相互作用 结构和语音。 以前的研究（Pierrehumbert博士对此很重要） ），使我们对这一问题有了一个相当深刻的认识。 音节的语音和音韵特征， 双水平韵律轮廓。 单词级别是指 两个系统相互作用，在这里，我们只有粗略的，诱人的 到目前为止的证据的限制和模式适用。 的 研究计划是根据经验确定这些限制， 然后建立语音学和音系学的理论模型， 英语中的构词法。 该模型有望促进我们对 语音学和音系学之间的关系， 语言科学的基本问题。 它也将有 语音识别等技术的潜在应用 和语音合成。 除了进一步推进皮埃尔亨伯特博士的重要研究 该奖项还将加强她的研究生教育， 大学，使她能够雇用研究生作为 她的项目的研究助理，并购买专门的 设备和软件，以保持她的实验室与最新的 技术的发展。

Dr. Janet Pierrehumbert will use a grant from the NSF Faculty Awards for Women Program to pursue her research at the critical interface between phonetics and phonology, between the physical properties of speech sounds and their abstract mental representations. The immediate focus of her research will be on the phonetics of words as they are produced in sentences, with special attention to the constraints on syllable adjacency and the interaction of sentence-level intonational contours with word structure and phonetics. Previous research (to which Dr. Pierrehumbert has made important contributions) has given us a fairly firm understanding of the phonetic and phonological characteristics of syllables, and of sentence-level prosodic contours. The word level is where these two systems interact, and here we have only sketchy, tantalizing evidence so far of the constraints and patterns which apply. The research plan is to determine those constraints empirically, and then develop a theoretical model of the phonetics and phonology of word-formation in English. The model promises to advance our understanding of the relationship between phonetics and phonology, one of the most fundamental issues in linguistic science. It will also have potential applications in such technologies as speech recognition and speech synthesis. In addition to furthering Dr. Pierrehumbert's important research program, this award will also enhance graduate education at her university, by enabling her to employ graduate students as research assistants on her project, and to purchase specialized equipment and software to keep her lab up to date with the newest developments in technology.