This project establishes a phonetics laboratory at Swarthmore College. The laboratory is used for class work in linguistics courses on phonetics and phonology, oral and written language, historical and comparative linguistics and introduction to linguistics. Other departments use the laboratory for special research projects. The new laboratory allows the objective identification of sounds, quantifying of differences between sounds, and supports theoretical work done in the classroom with technically verifiable work done in the laboratory. It allows the study of speech synthesis and offers a new and extremely effective introduction to the use of the scientific method. This last point is of particular significance, since linguistics is in the social sciences division and many students are naive of the scientific method and shy of technology. Integrating science into linguistics courses provides an enjoyable and relatively unthreatening introduction. The institution is matching the NSF grant with an equal amount of funds.
