Research
While my current academic LfbA-contract does not allocate any time towards research, I do find some freetime from time-to-time in order to expand my horizon and to titillate my mind. Since my arrival in the department in 2008, English phonetics and phonology have always interested me.
For the past couple of semesters, however, my interest has honed in on the pronunciation of Middle English (ME), in particular in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. While challenging, I enjoy phonemically transcribing parts of this ME text, so that others may read it aloud in its original pronunciation (or my interpretation of the original pronunciation). Let's take the first few lines of "The Prologue" as an example:
hwɑn θɑt ˡɑːprɪl wɪθ hɪs ˡʃuːrəs ˡsoːtə
θə druːxt ɔf mɑrʧ (h)ɑθ ˡpɛːrsəd to θə ˡroːtə
ɑn(d) ˡbɑːðəd ˡɛvrɪ vɛin ɪn swɪʧ lɪˡkuːr
ɔf hwɪʧ vɛrˡtɪʊ ɛnˡʤɛndrəd ɪs θə fluːr
hwɑn ˡzɛfɪrʊs eːk wɪθ hɪs ˡsweːtə brɛːθ
ɪnˡspiːrəd hɑθ ɪn ˡɛvrɪ hɔlt ɑn(d) hɛːθ
θə ˡtɛndrə ˡkrɔpəs ɑn(d) θə ˡjʊŋgə ˡsʊnə
hɑθ ɪn θə rɑm hɪs ˡhɑːlvə kuːrs ɪˡrʊnə
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heath
The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
In addition to creating a phonemic transcription, I am also interested in studying how the pronunciation of English has changed over the centuries. For instance, I want to discover unfamiliar sounds. A case in point is /x/ in druːxt in the above snippet . While this sound can still be heard in some varieties of Scottish English and Irish English, it is mostly absent from the so-called standard varieties of English. I also want to discover how current familiar sounds followed a very different pattern in ME. The voicing of the two th's (i.e. /ð/ and /θ/) examplifies this point. The determiner that, for instance, had a voiceless th-sound in ME. And lastly, as my doctoral thesis dealt in part with the articulation of the 18th letter of the English alphablet, I am curious as to the general articulatory development of r in English. In ME, it is often trilled. In Shakespeare's day, a major change occurs as it "loses" it trill and becomes a central approximant. That's right, Shakespeare also articulated his r's. So, when did standard British English become non-rhotic? That is for you to discover!
Don't think my research interest in earlier forms of English keeps me hundreds of years in the past! Such a judgement would be a fallacy. I am also currently exploring how artificial intelligent (AI) can be implemented into the English-language classroom, specifically with addressing pronunciation. While the advantages of AI with the writing process has received a great deal of attention, pronunciation training has once again become the Cinderella in the room. It is for this reason, I want to explore the benefits and pitfalls of AI with this particular language skill.
From lesson planning to engaging exercises with the IPA-symbols, some useful practical applications for AI in the pronunciation classroom are being saught. In one of my M.Ed. classes, students and I have experimented with ChatGPT and have tried to find uses of it for pronunciation training. In one instance, we created a fictious storyline with the addition of two unlikely characters. On the left-hand side is a cartoon merging two different protagonists from two separate stories (i.e. Little Red Riding Hood and He-Man). This comic scene uses the IPA-symbols to tell a story. Not only were visual cartoons created but also short written texts with various storylines.
As learning these symbols takes lots of practice, finding amusing and educational exercises can help to pique interest as well as improve students' command of the phonetic symbols. The end result is to assist students in improving their own spoken English. In this case with the cartoon on the left-hand side, American English is the focus.
When it comes to assessing spoken language, AI-tools tend to be less beneficial and more of a pitfall. While the results in my M.Ed. classroom experiment may have been less than satisfactory, AI is constantly enhancing and improving itself. In any case, it is also important to be aware of AI's limitations. AI is just the latest in a long line of technological innovations, evolving at an astonishing pace. The next big leap is just around the corner, so we must stay on top of the latest developments. Let's keep researching ...
