Department for phonetics and methods of teaching foreign languages

Organisation type:

 Public laboratory  

Affiliation:

 SPbGU - Saint-Petersburg State University  

Mailing address:

 199034, Russia, Saint-Petersburg, Universitetskaya nab., 11, SPbGU, Kafedra phonetiki  

Phone:

 (+7¬812) 328¬95 65

E-mail:

 paul@phonet.lang.pu.ru  
   

URL:

 http:/www.speech.nw.ru/phonetics/homepage.html  
Head: Liya Vasil’evna BONDARKO  

Phone:

 (+7¬812) 328¬95 65

E-mail:

 LVBon@LB1082.spb.edu  
Other members of the team:  
  Nina V. Vol’skaya, Pavel A. Skrelin, Igor’ V. Zharkov, N.D. Svetozarova, V.I. Kuznetsov  

Total staff:

  

Staff in language engineering: ~ 10

  

Activities description:

 The Department was set up in 1937 on the initiative of the academician L.V. Shcherba who laid the foundation of speech studies in Russia. From its beginning the Department aimed to contribute to the development of phonetic science through both research and teaching. The actual research program of the Department is directed towards the study of phonetics of spoken languages - Russian, West-European languages, minor languages of Russia - as well as to the study of general and applied phonetics. Current research programs: Linguistic Database for Phonetic Studies; Phonetic Database of Russian; Application of Acoustic Data in Explaining Historical Language Changes; Compilation-Based Speech Synthesis; Phonetic Interference; Phonetic Aspects of Teaching Russian as a Foreign Language; Computer-Based Language Teaching Programs etc. Department is included into the academic exchange program between Saint-Petersburg State University and the Universities of Amsterdam, Groningen, Utrecht, Leiden, Hamburg, Berlin, Helsinki, University of California etc.  
List of products and prototypes:  
 
  1. Speech synthesis systems: diphonic (RUSVOX); allophonic (2 versions); suballophonic (the last is not described)
  2. UDAR - linguistic software for the systems of speech synthesis
  3. Acoustic database management systems: Sound Archive, Speech Corpora, Allophone DB
  4. Pronunciation Modelling System for Russian Connected Speech
  5. Converter of unpartitioned transcription into a correctly spelled text (with an allowance for dialectal pronunciation); utilities for digitised speech multilevel segmentation (not described)
  6. Computerised Phonetic Fund of Russian language; speech databases; acoustic archives.
  
Joint projects, co-operation:  
  Joint projects with:  
 
  • University of Groningen (see the Web-site mentioned above),
  • with CNET (France Télécom),
  • Ruhr University (Germany), & other.
  
  Co-operation with:  
 
  • Pavlov Institute for Physiology,
  • Sechenov Institute for Evolutive Physiology,
  • University for Telecommunications and other teams in St. Petersburg