The 2020-2021 colloquium series continues on Monday, April 12, with a talk by our very own Susan Lin, held via Zoom from 3:10-5pm. The talk is entitled "Looking inward: reflections on the role of articulatory research," and the abstract is as follows:
Many of the oldest and most fundamental works in the history of the field of phonetics were articulatory studies. Yet at present, articulatory phonetics accounts for a relatively small fraction of the research published in the most influential phonetics journals. We are in a time when the field is, rightly, reviewing the scientific rigor, ethical standards, and public safety of its research methodologies. It is therefore reasonable to ask what novel contributions articulatory phonetics research can still make, so as to warrant its continued or even renewed use. In this talk, I share phonetic and phonological insights that have resulted from articulatory research. All of these findings point to evidence at the articulatory level that is otherwise hidden from view; these are insights that could not have otherwise been gleaned from acoustic or perceptual data. Some of these findings were the product of targeted investigations and controlled experimentation, while others were incidental findings from other studies, and as such I also argue for the continued value of basic exploratory articulatory research.