Bob Ladd: Research interests
References below are linked to entries on my publications page
Since the time of my PhD, my research has always focused on intonation and prosody. My PhD thesis was published in book form by Indiana University Press as The Structure of Intonational Meaning (1980). Probably the most important parts of the thesis were the chapters on accent placement, focus, deaccenting, etc. (see also 1980, 1983b). However, since my PhD I have done little more on that general topic, except for a chapter in my 1996 book. Instead, much of my work has concentrated on intonational phonetics and phonology. One aspect of the phonetic work was the development of a model for synthetic intonation during my first several years in Edinburgh, in collaboration with others at the Centre for Speech Technology Research (CSTR), in particular Alex Monaghan (1990a, 1990c). Another aspect has been a continuing theoretical critique of certain features of the mainstream Pierrehumbert analysis of English (e.g. 1983a, 1986, 1990a, 1993b , 2003a). A third aspect has been experimental work on various aspects of intonational phonetics, especially pitch range (1985, 1988, 1994, 1997) and, more recently, the alignment of pitch and segmental features (1998, 2000b, 2003a, 2004a, 2005a, 2005b, 2006a, 2006b, 2006d, 2006e, 2009a, 2009b).
Much of this work was brought together in my book Intonational Phonology, published in 1996 by Cambridge University Press. A second edition of this book appeared in late 2008. The second edition includes new material on the last ten years of instrumental phonetic research on intonation, and on the rapid developments in ToBI transcription systems, and has an associated web resource with sound files for all the examples in the book. A kind of outgrowth of the book is a tutorial paper (2008d) on prosodic fieldwork, by Nikolaus Himmelmann and myself, which appeared in Language Documentation and Conservation.
My work on the alignment of pitch features with the segmental string was part of three externally-funded projects:
· A project on the phonetics and phonology of Greek intonation, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (1995-97; co-principal investigators were myself and Amalia Arvaniti and the research associate was Ineke Mennen). The first paper from this project, which has been widely cited, appeared in Journal of Phonetics (1998); more recent publications include one on intonation and focus in Greek yes/no questions in Speech Communication (2006b) and one on the phonology and phonetics of "rising-falling" intonation contours in Language and Speech (2006d). A final paper (2009b) on the intonation of WH-questions appeared in Phonology. There are also some single-authored papers by Arvaniti.
· Growing out of the work on the Greek project, a project on the alignment of pitch targets in Dutch and English, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (1998-2001; co-PIs were myself and Ineke Mennen; the main paid researcher on the project was Astrid Schepman; from September 2000 the work was carried on by Robin Lickley). Two major papers from this project have appeared in JASA (1999 and 2000b), four in Journal of Phonetics (2003a, 2004a, 2005a, 2006a), and one in Language and Speech (2005b). In November 2009 the 2004a and 2006a papers both figured on the list of top 10 cited papers from the past 5 years on the JPhon web site.
· In conjunction with the Dutch project, a project on alignment and vowel length in Scottish and Southern British English, funded in part by a small grant from the British Academy. A paper (2009a) on this work appeared in Journal of Phonetics.
Growing out of this work I have also begun to work on theoretical issues related to surface contrast (2000a, 2006c), and am contributing a chapter on "phonetics in phonology" (forthcoming), to the second edition of Blackwell's Handbook of Phonological Theory. From January 2007 to July 2008 I was on an 18-month extended research leave, funded by an Individual Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. I am in the (probably slow) process of writing up the results of this work.
updated November 2009