Phorum

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.

Fall 2025

August 29

Introductions & round robin!

We'll share about our summers, then share any interesting puzzles or piece of data we've been working with. You are welcome to attend without presenting in the round robin.

September 5

Zach O'Hagan (UC Berkeley): Phonologically Conditioned Allomorphy in Chamikuro

In this presentation I describe for the first time patterns of phonologically conditioned (suppletive) allomorphy in Chamikuro, an endangered Arawakan language of Peru, based on fieldwork with Alfonso Patow Chota (born 1925) in 2024 and 2025. I show that vowel length conditions the selection of two semantically equivalent nominal possessive suffixes (-ːne and -ˀte); that syllable rime conditions the selection both of two equivalent verbal object markers (-ne and -ale) and of forms of two parallel paradigms of verbal inflectional suffixes (one paradigm: -(ː)a, -ka, -ʰka, -aka, -jaka); and that various verbal suffixes exhibit V- and C-initial allomorphic pairs (some enclitics exhibit parallel V- and /j/-initial pairs), the selection of which feeds phonotactic violations that are repaired. Consequently I demonstrate that some patterns are phonologically optimizing while others are non-optimizing. I situate these patterns in a description of the phonotactics of the language, in particular the analysis of laryngeal codas, which differs from Parker's (1994, 2001) but more closely resembles Robertson's (2025) for related Yanesha', two types of epenthesis, and haplology.

September 12

Anna Björklund (UC Berkeley PhD recipient): Highlights in Nomlaki phonetics

Nomlaki (ISO: nol) is a language of Northern California without first-language speakers. Its audio documentation is limited to (at the time of writing) one 5-minute recording of speaker Sylvester Simmons and one 20-minute recording of speaker Andrew Freeman. This talk presents selected phonetic insights excerpted from my recently completed dissertation, A Grammar of Nomlaki (Summer 2025), using Freeman's 20-minute recording (Swadesh and Melton 1953). Highlights include a discussion on the phonetics of Nomlaki vowels (including length, quality, duration, and stress), stops (including VOT, locus equations, and a typology of ejectives), lexical stress, and phrasal intonation. This work expands upon Björklund (2021) as the second published acoustic study of Nomlaki phonetics, and the first to discuss non-vowel data. These findings are brought to bear on Nomlaki's relation to Wintuan and Californian typology, as well as the problems of conducting phonetic research with limited archival materials. 

September 19

AMP 2025 Practice Talks

Poster presentation: Maksymilian Dąbkowski - The phonology of sperm whale coda vowels
Poster presentation: Kai Schenck - A Dispersion-Theoretic analysis of Yurok glottal state gestures

September 26

No meeting -- Attend AMP 2025 instead!

October 3

Katie Russell (UC Berkeley): The typology of nasal contrast: The view from Kwa

The vast majority of languages across the world make use of the feature [nasal] contrastively within some domain. There are four logically possible ways in which languages may use the feature [nasal] in segment inventories (Cohn 1993, Clements et al. 2015): nasality may be contrastive for (A) neither vowels nor consonants, (B) vowels but not consonants, (C) consonants but not vowels, or (D) both vowels and consonants. Traditionally, in the literature, it has been assumed that all languages may be categorized as either Type C or Type D (Ferguson 1963), though it is clear today that there are groups of languages which are best analyzed as having systems of Types A and B in particular areas of the world. In this talk, I focus on the case of the Kwa branch of Niger-Congo, spoken across Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Benin. Within Kwa phonological systems of types B, C, and D are widely attested. Drawing on a survey of 45 Kwa varieties, I outline the diversity of systems of nasal contrast within the family, highlighting areas of particular theoretical interest (implosives! phonological alternations where the set of undergoers is not a natural class! interactions with morphology!) and suggesting possible historical pathways toward different types of nasal contrasts.

October 10

Hannah Sande (UC Berkeley) and Sansan Claude Hien: Puzzles in the Lobi (Gur) tone system: Downstep and floating tones

In this talk I describe the tone system of Lobi (Gur, Côte d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso) based on data collected between 2021-2025 with Lobi speaker Sansan Claude Hien. While there is some previous descriptive work on Lobi, there is very little prior work on the tone system and little to no analytical work on any aspect of the phonology of the language. I begin to address these gaps, pointing out two puzzles in the Lobi tone system along the way: the domain of downstep, and the morpheme-specific behavior of floating H tones.

October 17

Grace Brown (Stanford University): Gender Identity and Ideology Shape Perceptions of Masculinity in Male Speech

In perceptibly male speech, a fronted or higher spectral frequency /s/ is typically ideologically associated with non-normative masculinity (e.g., Munson et al. 2006; Campbell-Kibler 2007). However, most research on the perception of /s/ variation has centered cisgender listeners, leaving unexamined how gender-diverse individuals may orient differently to this acoustic cue. In this talk, I discuss how listeners’ gender identity influences their perception of /s/ variation across multiple male voices. I further argue that perceptual research should move beyond identity alone to consider how listeners’ gender ideologies influence their judgments of male speech. Results show that gender-diverse listeners, particularly those with gender-progressive ideologies, tend to resist “normative” perceptual patterns associated with male voices. These findings invite broader reflection on the intertwined roles of identity and ideology in sociolinguistic perception.

October 24

Nick Aoki (UC Davis): When multiple-talker exposure is necessary for generalization: Insights into the emergence of sociolinguistic perception

Phonetic variation correlates systematically with broad social categories (e.g., male and female sibilants tend to differ acoustically; Jongman et al., 2000). In turn, social cues can alter our perception of the speech signal (e.g., sibilant categorization is influenced by speaker gender; Strand & Johnson, 1996). What is unclear is how sociolinguistic perception arises. In other words, under what conditions do listeners learn that a particular phonetic variant is socially-mediated and can generalize to other group members?

In this talk, I revisit a longstanding question in linguistics and cognitive science about talker variability. Is multiple-talker exposure required for generalization to novel talkers, or is single-talker exposure sufficient? Across two studies, I highlight a critical role of listener experience on generalization. Multiple-talker exposure is unnecessary when exposed to more familiar types of speech (e.g., L2-accented English; Aoki & Zellou, 2025a), but necessary when exposed to
completely unfamiliar phonetic variants (e.g., a gendered, /p/ to [b] phonetic shift; Aoki & Zellou, 2025b).

These results enhance our theoretical understanding of generalization, offering insight into the emergence of sociolinguistic perception.

October 31

TBA

November 7

TBA

November 14

Sarah Ertel (UC Berkeley alumna)

November 21

Zach Wellstood (UC Berkeley)

December 5

Maksymilian Dąbkowski (UC Berkeley)

Topics