Research

Here are some of the major projects I’ve been working on recently. For a full list of publications and presentations, see my UTA Research Profile or my CV.

Phonetic convergence, perceptual normalization, and talker-specific variability

Previous work has shown that people unconsciously adjust their pronunciation towards the speech they hear. We know less about how this convergence interacts with perceptual adaptation, the process by which listeners identify sounds across talkers with varying acoustics. In other words, do people imitate how someone is speaking or the raw acoustic properties of the individual’s voice?

In our results so far, people do imitate raw and lexically-specific acoustics, which indicates that fine-grained talker-specific variability is stored and utilized. This has implications for theories of perceptual normalization, working memory, and cognitive representations of speech sounds. Results may also have applied implications for language teaching and clinical speech therapy as they could indicate a benefit to hearing pronunciations from a speaker who has a similar voice to the learner/patient.

Selected related output:

JASA-EL paper: “Competing targets in English sibilant imitation”

ICPhS paper: “Spontaneous imitation of English sibilants by native and non-native speakers”

Multiple recent presentations

Phonology, register and dialectal variation in Mandarin sibilants

Many varieties of Mandarin exhibit a three-way place contrast among sibilants: alveolar, retroflex, and alveopalatal. Some varieties, notably Taiwan Mandarin, merge the alveolar and retroflex in at least some contexts. I work on several questions related to these sounds:

  1. What is the phonetic nature of the vowels that follow alveopalatal [ɕ]? What can this tell us about the phonological representation of these sounds?
    • AMP proceedings paper: “Coarticulation with alveopalatal sibilants in Mandarin and Polish: Phonetics or phonology?” Supplemental proceedings of the Annual Meeting on Phonology 2019. [link]
  2. How does the regional alveolar-retroflex merger affect the realization of the alveopalatal sibilant?
  3. How do Mandarin speakers alter the phonetic realization of the sibilants when using a clear speech register? What cues are used to enhance sibilant place contrast? How does this differ across dialects?

The relationship between phonological contrast and phonetic variation

I have several strands of work that investigate the question of how phonological contrast constrains (or doesn’t constrain) phonetic variability, both at the typological level and at the individual level.

Selected related output:

Dissertation: “Effects of phonological contrast on within-category phonetic variation”

Paper in JASA: “Speech sounds in larger inventories are not (necessarily) less variable” from the special issue Ideas worth reconsidering in speech communication

Paper in Language and Speech: “Differential cue weighting in Mandarin sibilant production”

Other projects

  • Phonetic analysis of code-switching in the sermons of Black pastors (joint work with Tracy Conner, Northwestern)
  • Language-specific constraints for analyzing opacity in Harmonic Serialism