astronomy

Patrice Beddor

Patrice Beddor is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Patrice Beddor rather than just read about it. In short: Patrice (Pam) Speeter Beddor is John C. Catford Collegiate Professor (Emerita) of Linguistics at the University of Michigan.

Key takeaways

Patrice Beddor belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Patrice Beddor to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Patrice Beddor from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Patrice (Pam) Speeter Beddor is John C. Catford Collegiate Professor (Emerita) of Linguistics at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on phonology and phonetics. Her research has dealt with phonetics, including work in coarticulation, speech perception, and the relationship between perception and production.

Education Beddor received a B.S. from the University of Minnesota in French. She spent a year of her Ph.D. program studying in Paris at the Universite de Paris VII, Sorbonne from 1976-1977, and returned to the University of Minnesota to finish her Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1982 with primary advisor Winifred Strange. Her dissertation, entitled Phonological and phonetic effects of nasalization on vowel height, was published by the Indiana University Linguistics Club in 1983.

Career and research Beddor held a post-doc at Haskins Labs and was a lecturer at Yale before becoming a linguistics faculty member at the University of Michigan in 1987. In 2011 she was named a John C. Catford Collegiate Professor of Linguistics. She served as the Chair for the Department of Linguistics at the University of Michigan from 2004 to 2010, and later served as interim chair from 2013-2014. Beddor is focused mostly in the Fields of Phonetics, Perception- Production relations, and Sound change, and much of her research focuses on production, acoustics, and perception of coarticulation. She has also done work in laboratory phonology, especially the phonetic underpinnings of sound change, with an interest in the relation between the cognitive representation and the physical instantiation of speech. She has numerous publications on these topics, in books and prestigious journals.

Teaching In addition to research she is an accomplished professor and mentor. She has spent a large part of her career working with undergraduate and graduate students, and has received the University of Michigan LSA Excellence in Education award, as well as the Rackham School of Graduate Studies John D’Arms award (2002).

Honors Beddor is an elected member of the International Phonetic Association Council, and is a member of the Weinberg institute for Cognitive Science Executive Committee. In 2018, Beddor was inducted as a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America.

Selected publications Krakow, R. A., Beddor, P. S., Goldstein, L. M., & Fowler, C. A. (1988). Coarticulatory influences on the perceived height of nasal vowels. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 83(3), 1146-1158. Patrice Speeter Beddor. 1993. The perception of nasal vowels. In Nasals, Nasalization, and the Velum. Phonetics and Phonology, vol. 5. 171–196. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-360380-7.50011-9 P.S. Beddor. JD Harnsberger, S Lindemann. 2002. Language-specific patterns of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation: Acoustic structures and their perceptual correlates. Journal of phonetics 30: 591–627. https://doi.org/10.1006/jpho.2002.0177 Maria-Josep Sole, Patrice Speeter Beddor & Manjari Ohala (Editors). 2007. Experimental approaches to phonology. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199296828 Beddor, P. S. (2009). A Coarticulatory Path to Sound Change. Language, 85(4), 785–821. JSTOR 40492954 Beddor, P. S. 2012. Perception grammars and sound change. The Initiation of Sound Change: Production, Perception, and Social Factors, eds. M-J. Solé and D. Recasens, pp. 37–55. John Benjamins. Beddor, P. S. 2013. Speech perception. Oxford Bibliographies Online: Linguistics, ed. M. Aronoff. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/obo/page/linguistics

References University of Michigan bio of Beddor

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Patrice Beddor

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Patrice Beddor claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Patrice Beddor before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Patrice Beddor ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Patrice Beddor

In research: Patrice Beddor appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Patrice Beddor in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Patrice Beddor is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American women linguists, Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America, Haskins Laboratories scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Patrice Beddor outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Patrice Beddor in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Patrice Beddor means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Patrice Beddor out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Patrice Beddor in simple terms?

Patrice (Pam) Speeter Beddor is John C. Catford Collegiate Professor (Emerita) of Linguistics at the University of Michigan.

Why does Patrice Beddor matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Patrice Beddor?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Patrice Beddor.