MIT Speech Communication Group: Courses
Speech Communication Courses
6.501: Sound, Speech, and Hearing.
Introduces the physical, physiological, and psychological bases of
auditory communication. Sound propagation in tubes, sound radiation,
properties of neural and muscular elements, the vocal tract and speech
generation, signal transmission in the auditory system, perception of
attributes of speech and speechlike sounds, and the linguistic units
that underlie speech events. Disorders of human
communication. Alternate years.
K. N. Stevens, L. D. Braida
6.541J: Speech Communication
Survey of structural properties of natural languages, with special
emphasis on the sound pattern. Physiology of speech production,
articulatory phonetics. Acoustical theory of speech production;
acoustical and articulatory descriptions of phonetic
features. Perception of speech: the auditory capabilities of humans;
evidence for perceptual correlates of phonetic
categories. Applications to recognition and generation of speech by
machine. Recommended prerequisite: mathematical background equivalent
to 6.003.
K. N. Stevens, S. J. Keyser
6.542J: Laboratory on the Physiology, Acoustics, and Perception of
Speech
Experimental investigations of speech processes. Topics:
a) measurement of articulatory movements, b) measurements of pressure
and volume velocity, c) computer-aided waveform analysis and spectral
analysis of speech, d) synthesis of speech, e) perception and
discrimination of speechlike sounds, f) speech prosody, g) hidden
Markov models for speech recognition, and other topics. Recommended
prerequisites: 6.501, 6.002 or 18.03. Alternate years. 4 Engineering
Design Points.
K. N. Stevens, J. S. Perkell,
S. ShattuckHufnagel
6.551J: Acoustics of Speech and Hearing
Electric-acoustic
analogies. Review of basic ideas of circuit theory; natural
frequencies, two-ports, reciprocity, energy, and power. Laws of
acoustics. Waves in one dimension. Acoustic impedance. Natural
frequencies in tubes. Lumped approximations. Losses, non-uniform plane
waves, horns. Room acoustics. Sound sources and microphones. Concepts
applied to speech production and hearing. Laboratories demonstrate
measurement methods, data presentation, and tests of theory. 4
Engineering Design Points.
W. T. Peake, J. J. Rosowski,
W. M. Rabinowitz, K. N. Stevens
