Damir Horga

Phonetics at the University of Zagreb, Croatia

History of Zagreb University

The Department of Phonetics is one of the 22 departments constituting the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Zagreb (Croatia). On September 23, 1669, Leopold I, Roman Emperor and Emperor of Austro-Hungary, issued a Diploma by which he accorded the status and privileges of a university to the Jesuit Academy in the Royal Free City of Zagreb, capital of Kingdom of Croatia and Slovenia. This date marks the beginning of the ancient history of the University of Zagreb. In 1773, the Jesuit Academy was transformed into the Royal Academy consisting of three faculties: theology, law and philosophy. After 1784, only the last two of them remained within the Academy, while theology was attached to the Roman-Catholic seminar. In 1874, the University of Francis Joseph in Zagreb was officially established and in October of that year, the new history of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Zagreb began. In 1999, the Faculty celebrated its 125^th anniversary.

History of Zagreb Phonetics

The speech investigations of Petar Guberina, professor of Romance philology at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, including his experimental research into the phonetics of sentence intonation before the Second World War in Italy (laboratory of Agostino Gemelli), serves as a platform for the institutionalization of Zagreb phonetics.

The foundation of the Experimental section at the Department of Philology of the Vugoslav Academy of Science and Art (after the disintegration of Vugoslavia in 1992, it became Croatian Academy of Science and Art) was established in 1953 by Guberina and can be considered the beginning of institutional phonetic research in Croatia. The following year (1954), the Institute of phonetics was established at the Faculty of Philosophy. At that time (1952), Guberina had already published his book Zvuk i pokret u jeziku (Sound and movement in language) introducing linguistics and the analysis of articulated speech and complex properties of sound (intensity, pitch, rhythm, tempo) and movement (not only of speech organs but of the whole body: muscle tension, mimic and gestures), as well as, linguistic context and the situational context as the inevitable constituents of speech. The Institute of Phonetics was established to continue phonetic research and promote the audiovisual-global and structural method (AVGS) of teaching foreign languages and verbotonal method of rehabilitation of hearing impaired people.

Of equal importance and priority in speech and language, the theory was applied to the AVGS method of foreign language teaching and in verbotonal method of rehabilitation of deaf and hearing-impaired people. The AVGS method was elaborated in collaboration with Paul Rivenc (CREDIF, France, Pariš) in 1954. The language teaching courses, written in Pariš and Zagreb, were designed with respect to existing audiolingual and audio-oral methods but strove to avoid mechanical drill and tried to maintain the global and structural unity of linguistic expression and meaning of the real speech situation in the teaching process. Emphasizing the primacy of oral language, special attention was paid to the perception of foreign language and acquisition of correct pronunciation. The original procedures were modified to include specially constructed acoustic filters which brought out the optimal form of the foreign language intonation, rhvthm and particular sounds and in that way helped the student to perceive and pronounce the foreign language as close as possible to native speakers. In the verbotonal method for hearing impaired persons, it was claimed that it is possible to transmit the acoustic information of speech through a narrow acoustic channel if the form of the channel is shaped according to the hearing residues of the impaired person.

In 1961, the first (post-)graduate course of phonetics started at the Faculty of Philosophy of Zagreb University and the students graduated in philology or surdopedagogy. In 1964, the first MAs in phonetics were awarded (Nada Hodek-Horvat, Dušanka Orlandi and Branko Vuletić) and soon after the first doctoral dissertations in phonetics were defended by Slavčo Keramičevski (1962), Ivo Škarić (1965), and Branko Vuletić (1967).

In 1963, the Chair of Phonetics was founded at the Department of General Linguistics and in 1965, the first generation of students enrolled. In 1968, the Chair of Phonetics was promoted into The Department of Theoretical and Applied Phonetics (nowadays simply known as the Department of Phonetics). The teaching staff at that time was l professor, 3 assistant professors, and 3 lecturers. The number of enrolled students on average was quite high, with more than 50 students per year. It was supposed that graduated phoneticians could be emploved as speech communication teachers, as therapists for speech and hearing disorders, or as specialists in the transmission of speech through different acoustic channels, and in the field of speech technology.

Teaching Program

The main concept in the education of phoneticians has remained the same during almost 40 years of study. Naturally, the contents of particular subjects were modernized and -new subjects were introduced in line with the development of phonetics in general. Now, phonetics can be studied as one of two equally important majors, the second one being almost any of other major subjects taught by the Faculty of Philosophy (Croatian language and literature, foreign languages and literature, linguistics, classic philology, history, history of arts, sociologv, philosophy, ethnologv, archeology, computer sciences, etc.). The Department of Phonetics consists of three Chairs: the Chair of Theoretical Phonetics, the Chair of Applied Phonetics, and the Chair of Aesthetic Phonetics and Orthoepy of Croatian language. Here are the main subjects of the phonetic teaching program: Articulatory phonetics, Acoustic phonetics, General phonetics, the Theory of information and communication, Speech linguistics, Psychoacoustics, Croatian orthoepy, Phonetic transcription, Croatian dialects, Verbotonal theory, Speech and hearing pathology, Orthophony, Correction of the pronunciation, Actor's speech, Foreign language teaching methods, Speech and hearing rehabilitation, Neurophonetics, Speech technology, Rhetorics, Speech acquisition, Expressive phonetics, Speech of mass media, Speech ability measurement, Phonetics and phonology, Stylistics, Audiotechnology, Nonverbal communication, and Speech perception. Some subjects are taught at medical policlinics, speech and hearing rehabilitation policlinics, the Theater and Arts Academy, radio and television broadcasting stations, and the Faculty of education and rehabilitation, demonstrating the interdisciplinary character of the phonetic educational program.

The teaching program in phonetics lasts four years, 13 periods of lectures, exercises and seminars a week.

Every year, approximately 40 students enroll in the Department of Phonetics.

Postgraduate study of phonetics is incorporated into the Postgraduate study of Linguistics. There are approximately 5 postgraduate students of phonetics enrolled every year.

Research

Major scientific research projects accomplished at the Department and the Institute of Phonetics were Čaše studies in the use ofrestricted bands offrequencies in auditory rehabilitation of deaf (1962-67', P. Guberina), Study of the sensitivity of the blind for rhythm and intonation when learning foreign languages (1968-70, P. Guberina, I. Škarić), Investigation of speech acquisition in children (1971-75, I. Škarić^ The ejfectiveness ofaudio-oral methods in the education of speech expression in elementary and high schools (1971-75, I. Škarić, B. Vuletić), Intonation function in Serbo-Croatian syntax (B. Vuletić, 1976-80), Speech communication (B. Vuletić, 1982-86), Contemporary Serbo-Croatian language and its relations to other languages (1986-90, I. Škarić), Ethiology of speech disorders and classification and rehabilitation of voice (I. Škarić, 1986-93), Croatian standard speech in speech technology (J. Bakran, 1986-93). At present, faculty at the Department of Phonetics are conducting three major research projects: Speech production and perception (D. Horga), Croatian standard word prosody (I. Škarić), and Speech stylistics in poetry andpolitical communication (B. Vuletić).

Phonetic Section

The Phonetic Section was founded in 1984 as part of the Croatian Philological Association. The Phonetic Section is a scientific and professional association of phoneticians and other specialists in the fields related to phonetics (hearing and speech therapists, linguists, physicians, engineers, etc.), and the third and the fourth year students of phonetics. The main aims of the Section are four-fold. The flrst one is maintaining the professional status of phoneticians. We must admit that though the undergraduate study of phonetics has existed for almost 40 years, phoneticians have had difficulties in fmding jobs. The second activity is monthly meetings for members of the Section with the lecturers and discussions on professional and scientific phonetic topics. Third, the Section and the Department of Phonetics organize scientific conferences (every three years) entitled Speech research. Each conference has one central topic (speech of the electronic media, speech and neuroscience, etc.) and general phonetic topics. The average number of participants is about 100 with approximately 70 papers being presented. Finally, the fourth activity of the Section, in collaboration with the Ministry of education and sport, is the organization of the School of rhetorics for high school students (the head of the School is Ivo Škarić, Ph.D.) as the optional 10-day course twice a year with the following topics: speech composition, rhetorical figures, nonverbal signs, argumentation, debate, brainstorming, negotiation, voice and articulation exercises, etc. It is worthwhile mentioning that in the official secondary school program in Croatia, there is no such subject as rhetorics.

The Phonetic Section issues the Journal Govor - časopis za fonetiku (Speech - the phonetic journal) - Ivo Škarić, editor-in-chief. The first issue was published in 1971, but after publishing only three issues, there was an interruption in publication until 1985. Since that time, the journal has been published regularly. In 1999, the XVIth volume was published.

Staff

Head of Department Vesna Mildner, Ph.D.

Members

Juraj Bakran, Ph.D., Damir Horga, Ph.D., Ivan Ivas, Ph.D., Marija Pozojević Trivanović, Ph.D., Ivo Škarić, Ph.D., Gordana Varošanec-Škarić, Ph.D., Branko Vuletić, Ph.D., Zrinka Rukavina, electronic engineer, Elenmari Pletikos, BA, research assistant, Jelena Vlašić, BA, research assistant, Nikolaj Lazic, BA, research assistant, Ivančica Cesarec Bačić, librarian, Marica Živko, administration.

Collaborators from other institutions or departments

Mladen Hedjever, Ph.D., Nadja Runjić, MD Ph.D. Smiljana Štajner Katušić, MD

Ph.D., Marija Hunski, MD Ph.D., Vladimir Kozina, MA, Miro Kačić, Ph.D.

Equipment

Acoustic studio facilities. Airstream measurement. About 10 PC's. Address

Department of Phonetics, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb, I. Lučića 3, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia.

Telephone: 385-1-6120-096; Telefax: 385-1-6156-879; e-mail: fonetika@ffzg.hr

Damir Horga

University of Zagreb, Faculty of Philosophy

Department of Phonetics, Zagreb, Croatia

e-mail: dhorga@ffzg.hr