Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology

Sexuality, gender, and the voice in (Bay Area) English

Amber Galvano
2026

The acoustic signal is the carrier of not only linguistic (as in, what the interlocutor intends to communicate) but also socio-cultural meaning (as in, who a speaker-listener is). The feld of sociophonetics hinges on the inextricability of these two facets of speech sounds. It has been established that speakers can both intentionally and unintentionally communicate aspects of social identity, including gender and sexuality, in the subtle distinctions present in their production of sounds in a given language system. In turn, listeners may draw upon the biases engendered by previous...

Aspects of Tone in Cua

Zach Wellstood
2026

This dissertation constitutes the first description and analysis of the tone system of Cua, a highly endangered and underdocumented Kalahari Khoe language of the Tshwa subgroup spoken in southeastern Botswana. This dissertation includes (i) an updated phonological sketch of Cua, including evidence of segmental contrasts and phonotactic constraints, (ii) an empirical overview of Cua’s tonal inventory, tonal phenomena, and tonal morphophonology, (iii) the results of a phonetic study on lexical tone in Cua conducted with 6 Cua speakers, and (iv) a phonological analysis of Cua tone which...

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.

Spring 2026 February 13

Kai...

Phorum 2025

Spring 2025 January 31

Maksymilian Dąbkowski (UC Berkeley): The unpredictable but expected deglottalization in some former A'ingae derivatives

I describe and analyze the phonological form and historical trajectory of nominal derivatives in A’ingae (ISO 639-3: con), an underdocumented Amazonian isolate (Dąbkowski 2021). Some words historically derived with otherwise preglottalized nominalizers have lost their glottalization over time. I propose that these “exceptions” are reflexes of originally glottalized words, which underwent semantic shift and lost glottalization due to...

Keith Johnson

Professor of the Graduate School

PhD, Ohio State University

Linguistic phonetics, psycholinguistics, neurophonetics

Hannah Sande

Assistant Professor of Linguistics

PhD, UC Berkeley

Phonology, morphology, and their interface; prosody; language documentation and description; African languages, especially languages of Côte d'Ivoire

Metrical stress and glottal stops in A’ingae: A study of cyclicity and dominance at the interface of phonology and morphology

Maksymilian Dąbkowski
2025

This dissertation presents a theoretically informed study of A’ingae (or Cofán, iso 639-3:con), an Amazonian language isolate spoken in Ecuador and Colombia. The first part of the dissertation is descriptive. In a chapter on phonology, I touch on the language’s phonotactics, laryngeal agreement, diphthongal processes, recent sound changes, nasal spreading, as well as prosody and glottalization. In a chapter on morphosyntax, I describe the structure of A’ingae sentences, including matrix and (co)subordinate clauses, auxiliary verbs, serial verb constructions, wh-movement, and second-...

QP fest 2018!

November 22, 2018

QP Fest will be held on Monday, November 26, in Dwinelle 370, from 3-5pm. (Note the rescheduled date!)

The schedule is as follows:

Introduction (3:10-3:15) Tessa Scott: "Conjoint/disjoint in Ndengeleko: A head movement alternation" (3:15-3:35) Karee Garvin: "Positional effects on timing and coordination of segments within the syllable" (3:35-3:55) Yevgeniy Melguy: "Talker ethnicity and listener expectation in the perception of foreign-accented speech" (3:55-4:15) Mini-break (4:15-4:20) Noah Hermalin: "Ambiguity and efficiency trade-offs in Sumerian cuneiform" (4:20-4:40) Myriam Lapierre: "A phonological analysis of Panãra" (4:40-5:00)

Phorum 2018

Spring 2018 March 5, 2018 - Brian Smith (UC Berkeley)

"Surface optimization in English function word allomorphy"

In OT accounts of Phonologically Conditioned Allomorphy (PCA), phonological conditioning is the result of markedness constraints, which favor allomorphs that optimize surface structure (e.g. Mester 1994, Tranel 1996, Mascaró 1996, Kager 1996). For example, the use of an before vowels in English can be analyzed in OT as the result of a high-ranking constraint against onsetless syllables, which...

Phorum 2013

Fall 2013

Previous Meetings SEPTEMBER 9 - LARRY HYMAN
UC BERKELEY

What is phonological typology?

In this talk I am concerned with the following questions:

What is phonological typology?

How are phonological typology and phonetic typology the same/different?

How are phonological typology and general phonology the same/different?

How are phonological typology and general typology the same/different?

Despite earlier work by Trubetzkoy, Jakobson,...