The Laboratory of Experimental Phonetics in Prague between 1919 and 1939: Research practices and student instruction
Abstrakt
The paper examines Prague's Laboratory of Experimental Phonetics in the 'interwar' period. The research is based on primary resources, most importantly a series of reports of the institute's founder, Josef Chlumský, who documented the activities occurring in the seminar of experimental phonetics that took place each semester at the university, and a cash book logging every new item that came into the possession of the laboratory.
The attending students experimented with speech and the various ways it could be examined instrumentally. It is shown that the laboratory was utilized not only for scientific research but also for demonstration and educational purposes.
Several important publications emerged under the auspices of the laboratory that employed experimentation and instrumental measurement. It is argued that this period at the Institute of Phonetics can aptly be depicted as a place and time of abundant and fruitful phonetic research with a strong experimentation ethos that was transferred to the students as well.