Former lecturer Alexandra Pfiffner and Baichen Du (former visiting undergraduate student) have published an article in Laboratory Phonology, titled "The co-variance of acoustic cues and lip gestures in the production of the Mandarin sibilant contrast." Check it out!
Bernat Bardagil (postdoc 2018-2020), Becky Jarvis (PhD 2025), Kelsey Neely (PhD 2019), and Zachary O'Hagan (pictured left to right) are attending Language Documentation and Archiving in Berlin this week. The conference is hosted by the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) and the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) at Humboldt University.
In and around the Department of Linguistics in the next week:
The Department of Spanish & Portuguese is pleased to welcome Miquel Simonet (University of Arizona), who will give a talk on Friday, Sept 11 at 12:00pm in the Spanish & Portuguese Library (Dwinelle 5125). The talk is titled “Vowel sandhi processes in Catalan and Spanish: Investigating the phonetics-phonology interface.”
Abstract: This presentation reports on the findings of three acoustic-phonetic studies examining the production of vowel sequences across word boundaries in Spanish and Catalan. The first two studies focus on Spanish and investigate the realization of the vowel sequences /ea/, /ae/, /eo/, and /oe/ across words, as in casa enorme and mono enano. The first project examines Castilian Spanish, the variety spoken in north-central Spain, while the second analyzes Southern Arizona Spanish. Traditional impressionistic descriptions have proposed differences in the phonetic realization of these sequences across the two varieties. A central goal of these studies is to determine whether such descriptions accurately reflect the acoustic-phonetic facts. The third study focuses on Majorcan Catalan, specifically the realization of stressed {/i a u/} + schwa sequences across word boundaries, as in argentí elegant and català enigmàtic. Impressionistic phonological accounts assume that the schwa is categorically deleted in these contexts, leaving only phonetic traces associated with the following vowel. Using acoustic evidence, this study evaluates the validity of these claims. Across the three projects, I ask whether impressionistic phonetic descriptions, used in subsequent phonological analyses, are corroborated by instrumental phonetic data. I conclude by discussing the implications of the findings for our understanding of phonologization and of the phonetics-phonology interface.
A workshop on "What African languages can teach us about phonology," co-hosted by Hannah Sande and Florian Lionnet, will be held in Dwinelle Hall at UC Berkeley, September 17-18, 2026. Registration is free (link), and more details can be found at the workshop website.
In and around the Department of Linguistics in the next week:
In and around the Department of Linguistics in the next week:
We're excited to announce that Katherine Russell, who recently completed her PhD in Linguistics at UC Berkeley, is joining the Script Encoding Initiative (SEI) this fall as a postdoctoral scholar, supporting the research stream on "neographies" – recently invented scripts.
This two-year position is made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation, under its Science and Technology Studies program. Katherine's work will involve investigating the contexts for script invention, particularly in West Africa and Northeastern India, and how these scripts interact with digital standards.
Welcome (back), Katherine!
The Ladino/Judeo-Spanish Working Group is excited to announce its Fall semester meeting schedule: alternating Tuesdays from 11am-12pm in Dwinelle 1229. The dates will be September 1, September 15, September 29, October 13, October 27, November 10, November 24, and December 8. Our meetings consist of academic talks about Ladino, storytelling and games with mother-tongue speakers, and guided Ladino conversation sessions. Total beginners are welcome and our snacks are famously good. Join our listserv here or contact Julian Vargo or Julia Peck. Al vermos (see you)!