The phonetics laboratory at the University of Cambridge was established by John Trim, lecturer in phonetics, in 1958. When the Department of Linguistics was born in the mid 1960s, with Trim appointed as its Director, the phonetics laboratory was incorporated into the department and based briefly in the centre of Cambridge before moving to the Sidgwick Site, just west of the city centre. Initially the lab, along with the rest of the department, was housed in a former sports pavilion, left over from the site's previous incarnation as a College playing field.
In 1993, after the pavilion was demolished to make way for the new Law Faculty building, the laboratory was moved to its present location in the Raised Faculty Building, making use of some space between offices and classrooms. Three offices for staff are enclosed within the laboratory space, as well as a suite of computers for use by students and lab members, and a sound-isolated room used for recording and perceptual testing.
For more history, please consult Nolan (2007), which is published in the Phonetician 2007-I /No.95.
Past PhD Students
| Name | Thesis title | Date | Supervisor(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tim Lameris | Non-native perception, production, and lexical processing of tone | 2022 | Brechtje Post |
| Jasper Hong Sim | Phonological acquisition in a multidialectal and multicultural context: The case of bilingual preschoolers in Singapore | 2022 | Brechtje Post |
| Yixin Zhang | Neutral Tone in Mandarin: Representation and Interaction with Utterance-level Prosody | 2021 | Brechtje Post, Elaine Schmidt |
| Kayeon Yoo | The production and perception of domain-initial strengthening in Seoul, Busan, and Ulsan Korean | 2020 | Francis Nolan |
| Geraldine Kwek | An analysis of /r/ variation in Singapore English | 2018 | Francis Nolan |
| Ricky Chan | Speaker variability in the realisation of lexical tones | 2017 | Francis Nolan |
| Yvonne Flory | The impact of head postures and body orientations on the acoustic speech signal | 2014 | Francis Nolan |
| Calbert Graham | Japanese and Spanish L1 adult speakers’ L2 acquisition of English prosody | 2014 | Brechtje Post |
| Aike Li | L2 rhythm development by Mandarin Chinese learners of English | 2014 | Brechtje Post |
| Elaine Schmidt | The acquisition of prosody in Spanish-English bilingual children | 2014 | Brechtje Post |
| Marco Aldo Piccolino Boniforti | A hybrid episodic-abstract computational model of human speech perception | 2012 | Sarah Hawkins |
| Spyros Armosti | The phonetics of plosive and affricate gemination in Cypriot Greek. | 2011 | Francis Nolan |
| Katharine Barden | Perceptual adaptation to talker-specific characteristics. | 2011 | Sarah Hawkins |
| Hae-Sung Jeon | Prosodic phrasing in Seoul Korean: the role of pitch and timing cues. | 2011 | Francis Nolan |
| Margaret Zellers | Prosodic detail and topic structure in discourse | 2011 | Brechtje Post |
| Eftychia Eftychiou | Lenition processes in Cypriot Greek. | 2009 | Francis Nolan |
| Rachel Baker | The production and perception of morphologically and grammatically conditioned phonetic detail | 2008 | Rachel Smith |
| Eric Fixmer | Grouping of auditory and visual information in speech. | 2008 | Sarah Hawkins |
| Pik Ki Peggy Mok | Influences on vowel-to-vowel coarticulation. | 2007 | Sarah Hawkins |
| Lluisa Astruc | The intonation of sentence-external elements in Catalan and English. | 2005 | Francis Nolan |
| Mark Jones | The phonetics and phonology of definite article reduction in Northern English dialects. | 2005 | Francis Nolan |
| Kirsty McDougall | The role of formant dynamics in determining speaker identity. | 2005 | Francis Nolan |
| Eva Liina Asu | The phonetics and phonology of Estonian intonation. | 2004 | Francis Nolan |
| Rachel Smith | Fine acoustic detail and context effects in spoken word recognition. | 2004 | Sarah Hawkins |
| Rachael-Anne Knight | Peaks and plateaux: The production and perception of intonational high targets in English. | 2003 | Sarah Hawkins, Francis Nolan |
| Margit Aufterbeck | Scottish English intonation: a phonetic analysis of a Fife dialect. | 2003 | Francis Nolan |
| Keiko Masuda | A phonetic study of sound symbolism. | 2002 | Francis Nolan |
| Elinor Payne | Consonant gemination in Italian: evidence for a fortition continuum. | 2000 | Francis Nolan |
| Alison Tunley | Coarticulatory influences of liquids on vowels. | 1999 | Sarah Hawkins |
| Jonathan Rodgers |
Vowel devoicing in English. |
1999 | Sarah Hawkins |
| Ee Ling Low | Prosodic prominence in Singapore English. | 1998 | Francis Nolan |
| Sarah Barrett | Prototypes in speech perception. | 1997 | Sarah Hawkins |
| Ian Watson | The effects of bilingualism on the acquisition of the voicing contrast. | 1997 | Francis Nolan |
| Paul Foulkes | Theoretical implications of the /p/>/f/>/h/ change. | 1994 | Sarah Hawkins, April McMahon |
| Helen Pandeli | The articulation of lingual consonants: an EPG study. | 1993 | Francis Nolan |
| Amalia Arvaniti | The phonetics of Modern Greek rhythm and its phonological implications. | 1991 | Sarah Hawkins |
| David Deterding | Speaker normalisation for automatic speaker recognition. | 1991 | Francis Nolan |
|
Paul Kerswill |
A sociolinguistic study of rural immigrants in Bergen, Norway. | 1986 | Francis Nolan |
| Jonathan Harrington | The phonetic analysis of stuttering. | 1986 | Francis Nolan |
| Paul Warren | The temporal organisation and perception of speech. | 1985 | Francis Nolan |
| Clive Grey | The word phonology of Welsh. | 1983 | Francis Nolan |
| Briony Williams | Stress in modern Welsh. | 1983 | Francis Nolan |