Speech is a fascinating thing. It is probably the most complex code that humans have ever developed, and it literally shapes and dominates every aspect of our life, including our thoughts and perceptions. Homo sapiens is actually homo loquens. Exchanging information is only a minor function of speech. In fact, we all mainly talk to establish, maintain, and enhance social bonds, to express our culture and identity, and sometimes just to entertain us and others.
To understand speech means to hold the key to the minds of people, to what drives them, and to how they see the world; not just of people, actually. Speech melody is the oldest acoustic means of communication, and you would be surprised how much of these archaic tones and sounds we still share with other species on this planet! I experience this every day with my dog, Oskar.
For 20 years now, I have the great pleasure to fully devote myself to the fascinating phenomenon of speech and to pass on my enthusiasm to students, colleagues, and interested listeners and learners -- and all this I can do even in what is probably the most exciting phase of speech communication research, because digital (tele)communications, talking machines, artificial intelligence, and automatic speech/speaker recognition will open up brand new opportunities and fields of activity. As a child, I enjoyed writing sci-fi short stories, devising alien languages, and experimenting with batteries, electrical circuits and computer programs. These things seemed incompatible when I had to choose my career path. As it turns out today, they no longer are!
LinkedIn