Category Archives: Resources

PhonoApps: online interactive tools for teaching and learning phonology

From Peter Jurgec

Advances in technology now make it possible to rethink certain aspects of how we teach phonology. PhonoApps are a collection of interactive online tools that help students learn basic phonological concepts. 

PhonoApps (including how-to videos and instructor resources) can be accessed at http://www.phonoapps.com

PhonoApps consist of two core applications: Featurize! and Derive!

Featurize! facilitates the understanding of natural classes. Users select a set of segments and the application determines whether it is a natural class, and if so, outputs the relevant features. The feature and segment set is entirely customizable. You can access the app directly at http://phonology.us/featurize

Derive! allows users to specify underlying representations, rules, and their order. The set of user-specified rules is applied in the order for a real-time derivation. You can access the app directly at http://phonology.us/derive

PhonoApps help students to grasp key phonological concepts more quickly and directly by engaging with the mechanism of feature assignment and rule interaction. Furthermore, students can explore questions that have not been easily addressable in phonology courses at the undergraduate level, including typologies, opacity, and rule formalization.

Clickable IPA Illustrations map

From Valerie Freeman

Here’s a great new resource I’d like to pass on: a map with the locations of the languages in the Illustrations of the IPA, with links to the articles in the Journal of the IPA and links to download zips of the sound files directly from the map. https://richardbeare.github.io/marijatabain/ipa_illustrations_all.html

As own of its creators, Marija Tabain says:

We have produced a clickable map showing the Illustrations of the IPA. The map is being updated with each new issue of the Journal of the International Phonetic Association.