SPAN-395_Special Topics(Capstone prep and Research)
Studies a particular topic relative to the Spanish language or Hispanic cultures.
Reflection:
The purpose of SPAN-395 is to prepare the graduating seniors for their final capstone project. In class we learned about what capstone entails and brainstormed possible capstone topics. Going into pre-capstone I had already had a topic in mind. I wanted to create a work that covers the intonation of vowels within the Spanish language. I originally got the idea from the observation of the melodic, grammatical poetry of the spoken language. How is the tonal progression of a sentence so melodically versed? My first hypothesis was that each vowel has an acoustic quality in direct melodic concordance to one another. That the vowels in spoken language have a tonal interrelationship. I thought this was my own idea. Then as I investigated key words within the idea, and I realized that, the interrelationship amongst vowels is considered that of intonation. The understanding of intonation is partly how voice recognition software was made possible. I relate vowels to the musical notes in the language of music. And just as musical notation is methodical, so is phonemic notation.
After the initial brain storming was done, we were advised to condense our topics, and funnel them down to a single pin point. I was advised, a paper on intonation was a two hundred page paper, not a twenty page paper, because the background knowledge of intonation requires an overall view of articulatory, acoustic and auditory phonetics. Dr. Carlos Arrizabalaga and I decided to focus on only one discipline within phonetics. I chose articulatory phonetics because I figured, that if I come to understand the principles of the creation of spoken sound, I will better understand the physical characteristic of each individual sound. Then, within articulatory phonetics I chose to investigate the vowels. Finally, I decided to analyze the articulatory limits of the vowel /a/ in Spanish, and compare them to those in English. I truly enjoyed researching articulatory phonetics and I am now one step closer to being able to explain intonation.
Attached below is the first outline that I made in SPAN-395:
_Capstone_Outline.pdf
Studies a particular topic relative to the Spanish language or Hispanic cultures.
Reflection:
The purpose of SPAN-395 is to prepare the graduating seniors for their final capstone project. In class we learned about what capstone entails and brainstormed possible capstone topics. Going into pre-capstone I had already had a topic in mind. I wanted to create a work that covers the intonation of vowels within the Spanish language. I originally got the idea from the observation of the melodic, grammatical poetry of the spoken language. How is the tonal progression of a sentence so melodically versed? My first hypothesis was that each vowel has an acoustic quality in direct melodic concordance to one another. That the vowels in spoken language have a tonal interrelationship. I thought this was my own idea. Then as I investigated key words within the idea, and I realized that, the interrelationship amongst vowels is considered that of intonation. The understanding of intonation is partly how voice recognition software was made possible. I relate vowels to the musical notes in the language of music. And just as musical notation is methodical, so is phonemic notation.
After the initial brain storming was done, we were advised to condense our topics, and funnel them down to a single pin point. I was advised, a paper on intonation was a two hundred page paper, not a twenty page paper, because the background knowledge of intonation requires an overall view of articulatory, acoustic and auditory phonetics. Dr. Carlos Arrizabalaga and I decided to focus on only one discipline within phonetics. I chose articulatory phonetics because I figured, that if I come to understand the principles of the creation of spoken sound, I will better understand the physical characteristic of each individual sound. Then, within articulatory phonetics I chose to investigate the vowels. Finally, I decided to analyze the articulatory limits of the vowel /a/ in Spanish, and compare them to those in English. I truly enjoyed researching articulatory phonetics and I am now one step closer to being able to explain intonation.
Attached below is the first outline that I made in SPAN-395:
_Capstone_Outline.pdf