The LPP Phonetics and Phonology Laboratory (Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie) is a research unit (UMR 7018) under the joint oversight of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Sorbonne Nouvelle University.
The lab was created in 1973 and became a UMR in 2001, with Jacqueline Vaissière and Annie Rialland alternating as director. Subsequent lab directors were Pierre Hallé, Cédric Gendrot, and Cécile Fougeron, with Rachid Ridouane and Naomi Yamaguchi in this role since September 2023.
An active research group: As of September 1, 2024, the LPP has 60 members (permanent and temporary staff, post-docs and Ph.D. students). The CNRS and the Sorbonne Nouvelle University consider our lab to be exemplary for the balance between research and training, and for our particularly strong evaluations for scientific excellence from the High Council for the Evaluation of Research and Higher Education (HCERES). The outlook for the lab is promising with several new members recruited in recent years, multiple research projects funded by national and European organizations, numerous collaborations within France and internationally, a strong record of publications, and wide international visibility. The lab’s research themes give it a distinctive place in the French academic context. It operates the only phonetics Ph.D. program in France that has maintained consistent recruitment, with an average of four new doctoral students each year and an excellent placement record for Ph.D. graduates and post-docs.
Teaching and research: The LPP specializes in research and teaching in phonetics, phonology, and automatic speech processing. Research at the lab, whether experimental, theoretical or applied, contributes to the multidisciplinary synergy between faculty at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University, CNRS researchers and engineers, and master’s and doctoral students. The lab is well-equipped with instrumentation for experimental studies, which is available for use by all French and international speech researchers.
We investigate issues relating to individual, situational, linguistic and social factors that influence speech production, transmission and perception. We also seek to identify phonetic and phonological invariants as well as factors that contribute to variation in speech.
We explore these questions across three different domains which correspond to the three principal themes of the lab’s research:
- Typology: phonetics, phonology, and interfaces
- Clinical phonetics, abnormal voice and speech
- Acquisition and multilingualism
Two cross-cutting themes overlap these three main themes: