The University of São Paulo Phonetics Lab, Lafalin, belongs to the Theodoro Henrique Meyer lab complex, part of the Linguistics Department of the University of São Paulo. Its facilities are located at Letras (Letters) building and are defined as: the project room, the recording booth room and the old equipment storage room. About the lab old collection there’s an article detailing the context that permeates the history of the lab before 2003, written by Rita Demasi and Beatriz Raposo Medeiros, titled “The story told by the USP Phonetics Lab’s collection”, which can be read in it’s entirety here.
Lafalin brings together researchers and students interested in developing studies on phonetic aspects of any given language, focusing on the acoustic phenomena of speech. For such purpose, the lab has good quality audio recording devices for studies which require collecting spoken or sung material, both for experiments regarding the production of speech or perception.
The term “Language,” added to the name “Phonetics Lab,” embraces many meanings: singing, musical language, and other forms of communication that complement each other in building the totality of human speech, and being so can be studied with the intention of describing and explaining the linguistic capacities of human beings.