Abstract We argue that the representational primes of human phonological faculty, so-called distinctive features, are innate and substance-free. Our arguments for innateness features built on traditional novel logical arguments, experimental evidence accumulating over recent decades, somewhat detailed proposals about their neurobiological reality. As symbols in brain, substance-free, is, they d...

Hugo Pipping was the first person to officially function as a phonetics teacher at the University of Helsinki. His most important contribution to Finnish phonetics was the introduction of scientific physiological research methods into the study of speech. Especially, he used the Phonautograph/Sprachzeichner developed by Victor Hensen in Kiel to manually analyse the spectral structure of vowel s...

This is a brief outlook of experiences during more than 50 years in phonetics and speech research. I will have something to say about my own scientific carrier, the growth of our department at KTH, and I will end up with an overview of research objectives in phonetics and a summary of my present activities.