Welcome to the Mason Phonetics & Phonology Lab!
The faculty and students in the Mason Phonetics & Phonology Lab, abbreviated as Mason PhonLab or MPL, study how people produce and perceive speech and how the physical properties of speech sounds are related to their cognitive (phonological) representations. Many of our research projects have focused on speakers and listeners from diverse language backgrounds, including language learners and multilingual speakers. The focus is on how speaker-listeners’ linguistic experiences can influence their perception and production of speech.
We also develop the Mason-Alberta Phonetic Segmenter (MAPS), a discriminative AI system that will automatically align words and phonetic segments with where they occur in audio (similar to subtitling). MAPS implements interpolation and ensemble techniques to allow users to create more precise boundaries between segments and to estimate uncertainty about where the boundaries are placed.
The Mason PhonLab houses state-of-the-art equipment for studying the articulation, acoustics, and perception of speech sounds, in the experimental investigation of spoken language. As of August 2023, the Mason PhonLab is under the direction of Dr. Matthew C. Kelley.
We are at Horizon Hall, room 3119, at GMU Fairfax Campus.
