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Catherine Anderson is a linguist at McMaster University who authored Essentials of Linguistics by Catherine Anderson and coauthored its expanded second edition. The first edition makes introductory phonetics concrete through articulator descriptions, consonant classification and the distinction between sounds and writing.^[ref]

Her institutional profile records a doctorate in linguistics from Northwestern University and describes work on teaching and accessibility in university learning.^[ref] Her textbook contribution supplies a route from everyday speech to explicit categories such as place of articulation, manner of articulation and voicing.

Nathan Sanders studies phonetics, phonology and patterns across languages, including physical constraints on sign language. His research homepage explicitly connects this work to mathematical and statistical models, as well as the perception and mechanics of signed production.^[ref]

He is a coauthor of Essentials of Linguistics (2nd edition) by Catherine Anderson and others, whose treatment includes both spoken and signed articulation. This connection matters scientifically: the organization of language can be compared across modalities while the physical signals and articulators differ. His homepage also describes teaching tools and games intended to make linguistic analysis accessible, alongside research on sound patterns and their change.

Phonetics studies the physical production, transmission and perception of speech. Articulatory phonetics examines the moving structures that shape the airflow; acoustic phonetics examines the resulting sound waves; auditory phonetics examines how a listener perceives them. These are different measurements along the same communication chain.

During voiced speech, airflow from the lungs drives vocal fold vibration. Movements of the tongue, lips and other parts of the vocal tract shape the emerging sound. This separates the production of a vibrating source from the articulation of recognizable speech, and both from the language expressed by it.^[ref]

A simple acoustic comparison records the same spoken phrase twice, once as a statement and once as a question. The sound pressure time series and its spectrogram allow changes in fundamental frequency, segment duration and pauses to be compared. The comparison investigates physical differences in prosody; the written words alone do not specify those measurements.

Prosody comprises patterns of pitch, timing and emphasis extending across the individual segments of speech. Speech intonation concerns the changing pitch pattern, while speech rhythm concerns the temporal organization. The same sequence of words can be spoken with different prosody.

For acoustic analysis, a recording is examined over time. A spectrogram can reveal changes in the fundamental frequency of voiced portions; segment durations and pauses provide timing measurements. The perceived pitch and emphasis are perceptual judgments, so they should be distinguished from the measured frequency and sound pressure. Phonetics relates the recorded signal to its production and perception.

Sky Onosson is a linguist whose research connects phonetics, phonology and quantitative analysis of language variation. His research statement emphasizes the changing acoustic structure of vowels, including diphthongs, and the use of the R for modeling and visualization.^[ref]

His 2018 dissertation investigated Canadian raising by comparing vowel duration and formant trajectories across Canadian and two American dialect groups.^[ref] Comparing a trajectory instead of only one instant helps distinguish a vowel's changing quality from the effects of duration. His work consequently treats time alignment as part of the scientific analysis, rather than assuming that measurements at a single relative time capture every contrast.

Homepage: onosson.github.io/