The Berkeley Phonetics, Phonology and Psycholinguistics Forum ("Phorum") is a weekly talk and discussion series featuring presentations on all aspects of phonetics, phonology, and psycholinguistics. We meet on Fridays from 4(:10)-5pm (unless specified otherwise below), in Dwinelle 1229 (Zoom link shared upon request). Phorum is organized by Kai Schenck. My email is "kai_schenck" @berkeley.edu.
Schedules from previous semesters can be found here.
Spring 2026
February 6
Larry M. Hyman (UC Berkeley): A Gap in OCP Tonal Effects
In this presentation I have two goals. First, I want to present an unattested gap in how the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) potentially interacts with H(igh) Tone Spreading (HTS), adding to the inventory presented by Myers (1997). Second, I will present some of the facts of HTS in the Thɔnkɔ dialect of Limba, a Niger-Congo isolate spoken in Sierra Leone (Hyman & Kamara 2025a,b). The relation between the two is that the Limba facts, independently intriguing, seem to involve the gap that I have in mind [no spoiler here]. However, I will show that the facts are better treated without invoking the apparently unattested repair in question. I will begin by giving a brief refresher of how the OCP affects tone, especially in systems where H is a privative tone contrasting with Ø. I briefly ask whether the reason that the gap has not been attested has to do with the substance of tone or the formal relation (ranking) between the general OT constraints which apply to other aspects of phonology as well.
February 13
Kai Schenck (UC Berkeley): Unsupervised learning at the limits of phonology: unbounded circumambient patterns
February 20
Noah Macey (UC Berkeley):
March 13
Lev Michael (UC Berkeley):
March 19
Marko Drobnjak: LLM-Assisted Welfare Language Accessibility: A User-Centered Experimental Framework
April 3
Jinyoung Jo (Stanford):
April 10
Zach Wellstood (UC Berkeley):
April 24
Larry Lyu (UC Santa Cruz):