 |
| credit: John Ohala |
Pierre Delattre was born in Roanne on the Loire on the 21st of October 1903.
After having finished secondary school in France he emigrated to the US and enrolled at the University of Michigan, but at the same time studied at the Sorbonne where he obtained a certificate in phonetics.
In 1947 Delattre accepted a post at the University of Pennsylvania. When Bell had developed the sound spectrograph and Haskins Labs started speech synthesis experiments, Delattre joined Haskins Labs. In 1953 Delattre went to the University of Colorado where he created the Speech Synthesis Project. In 1964 he joined the University of California at Santa Barbara.
 |
| credit: John Ohala |
When I was a student I was particularly fascinated by an article which appeared in the International Review of Applied Linguistics for Language Teaching (= IRAL), vol. 2 on pages 71-97. Its title is "Comparing the vocalic features of English, German, Spanish and French."
Delattre's publications are too numerous to mention here. The interested reader is kindly referred to Valdman, A., ed (1972), Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics to the Memory of Pierre Delattre, (Mouton). On pages 21-30 all his publications are listed.
He wrote a great book(let), apparently for his students at Middlebury College VT, a summer school, marked "Second Edition, 1951." Principes de Phonetique Francaise. A L'Usage des Etudiants Anglo-Americains
ReplyDeleteHe was my mentor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Great scientist, we could have developed Siri in 1967 without this stupid tennis game at Noon in Santa Barbara. Jean-Pierre de Villers, Ph.D.
ReplyDelete