UpDate - Vol. 12, No. 22, Page 5
March 4, 1993
Linguistics professor studies sound and syntax under grant

     I have always been interested in languages and more specifically the
structure of language so that linguistics was a natural field for me. My
current research involves the sound patterns of language, or phonology, as
they interface with syntax, or the grammatical structure of language."
     The speaker is Irene Vogel, associate professor of linguistics.
Through a prestigious National Science Foundation Visiting Professorships
for Women (VPW) grant, she is on leave at the University of Pennsylvania
throughout this academic year.
     The VPW program is designed to provide opportunities for outstanding
women scientists and engineers to serve as visiting professors at host
schools. In addition to research and teaching a graduate seminar at Penn,
Vogel acts as a mentor and counselor to women students in linguistics.
     Funded last year by a University of Delaware Research Foundation
grant, Vogel's research project is entitled "Interaction between the
Syntactic and Phonological Components of Grammar." She is interested in
analyzing how the grammatical structure of a sentence affects the actual
sound pattern of spoken words.
     For example, she said, the accent in the word "13," which falls on the
last syllable, can fluctuate, depending on the words with which it is
linked or on its usage. When used in the phrase, "13 women," where "women"
is accented the first syllable, there is a tendency to change the accent of
"13" to the first syllable. Conversely, in the sentence "All 13 wandered
around," where "13" is the subject of the sentence, the average speaker
accents "13" the last syllable, although "wandered," like "women," is
accented on the first syllable. In the phrase, "13 computers," where
"computers" is accented on the second syllable, speakers also accent "13"
on the last syllable.
     Vogel carries out acoustical analyses of speech of these speech
patterns as well, involving the duration of accented syllables, the pitch
pattern and the degree of loudness.
     For her analysis of the interrelationships of sound and syntax, Vogel
records subjects reading more than 400 carefully constructed sentences in a
soundproof room. The students are all from the northeast section of the
country so that dialects will not influence pronunciations.
     The recordings are stored, analyzed and measured by a computer, which
makes a sound spectrogram of each reading. The spectrograms are then
compared and patterns of speech emerge, Vogel said. A graduate of the
University of Wisconsin in Madison, Vogel earned her doctorate from
Stanford University where she wrote her dissertation on syllable structure.
She taught linguistics for five years at the University of Amsterdam.
     Thanks to a junior year in Italy and her experience in the
Netherlands, Vogel is fluent in both Italian and Dutch, as well as French,
and hopes to conduct similar research in analyzing other languages.
                                        -Sue Swyers Moncure