Home > About Us > Phonetics Lab

Phonetics Laboratory

The Phonetics Laboratory of the Department of CTL at the City University of Hong Kong is a teaching and research laboratory established in 1994. It is considered one of the best equipped phonetics laboratories in the region, certainly the best in Hong Kong. It has all the basic research tools of the latest speech analysis technology for carrying out research in various aspects of phonetics: acoustical, articulatory, perceptual, and physiological.

The lab is committed to high quality research on general phonetics and Chinese phonetics in particular. The lab carries out basic research into the acoustical, articulatory, perceptual, physiological, and linguistic aspects of the major Chinese dialects, namely Cantonese, Beijing Mandarin, and Shanghai. The results of the research provide basic knowledge of the phonetic, characteristics of the speech sounds of Chinese.

The lab provides important information for speech engineers engaged in research on synthesis of the speech sounds of the Chinese dialects; it provides normal reference speech data for speech therapists engaged in research on the pathological aspects of the speech sounds of the Chinese dialects; it provides acoustical data for sychologists to design stimuli for perceptual tests of the speech sounds of the Chinese dialects; and it provides speech evidence for voice identification of suspects in criminal cases.

The lab has received research grants from this university and RGC. Currently, a number of phonetic research projects funded or unfunded are being carried out in the laboratory by Professor Eric Zee and the graduate research students. In terms of teaching, the lab offers the basic courses, Phonetics and Phonology, as well as more advanced courses, Experimental Phonetics, Phonetic Theory, and Phonological Theory.

The lab organizes academic activities, aside from teaching and research, such as the weekly seminars on phonetics and speech science and the study tours for the phonetics students to visit the phonetics laboratories and acoustics laboratories in China. The lab has organized a major phonetics conference, bringing together phoneticians from the mainland and Taiwan and the local phoneticians and providing a forum for the exchange of research results in the area of experimental phonetics in the mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

Currently, the members of Phonetics Lab include Professor Eric Zee, a lab technician, three full-time research assistants, one PhD research student, three MiPhil research students, and six student helpers.

Last updated: 5 November 2008