Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology

Phorum 2023

Spring 2023 January 20

Sarang Jeong (Stanford): The relation between perception and production in an ongoing sound change: A pilot experiment on the younger group's perception of Korean three-way stop contrast

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether individual language users’ perception is parallel to their production when their language community is going through a sound change. When a sound change is in progress, do speakers with the new and old variants...

Phorum 2020

Spring 2020 March 2

Matthew Leonard (UCSF): Dynamic Brain Networks for the Perception and Organization of Speech

March 9

Mark Liberman (University of Pennsylvania): Symbols and Signals in Language Sound Structure

May 11

Raksit Lau (UC Berkeley): A Pathway to Tonogenesis: Shifting Language Dynamics in Kuy and the Perception-Production Link

Fall 2020 September 4

Round robin

Students and faculty...

Phorum Archive

Past Phorum talks can be found here:

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Phorum 2022

Spring 2022 January 21

Kie Zuraw and Paolo Roca (UCLA): Rhythms in OPM (Original Pinoy Music)

We use music and lyrics of OPM, Original Pilipino Music, to investigate a controversy about whether it is stress or vowel length that is active in Filipino, and whether words divide mainly into penult-stressed vs. ultima-stressed, or into penult-stressed vs. unstressed. We found in a small corpus of songs that "stressed" syllables, as compared to "...

Phorum 2021

Spring 2021 February 5 Maksymilian Dabkowski (UC Berkeley): Stress in Paraguayan Guaraní

I describe and analyze stress assignment in Paraguayan Guaraní (Tupian, ISO 639-3: gug). In PG, final stress predominates at the level of prosodic words and phonological phrases alike. However, non-final stress is also attested in exceptional roots, morphologically complex words, and multi-word phonological phrases. I propose that there is one basic mechanism for stress assignment in PG: In the course of prosodification, stress targets the right edge of a prosodic constituent. This captures PG's...

The morphosyntax of verbal agreement in Uab Meto

Tyler Lemon
2024

This dissertation describes and analyzes the morphology and syntax of verbal agreement in Uab Meto, an Austronesian language of Indonesia and Timor-Leste. The introduction provides background on Uab Meto, its speakers, and previous work on the language. Then the dissertation presents analyses of several aspects of Uab Meto grammar. The second chapter analyzes the syntactic structure of Uab Meto verbs and the morphology and allomorphy of elements within it, except agreement. The third chapter analyzes the allomorphy displayed by the language’s verbal agreement prefixes. The fourth chapter...

Dąbkowski publishes LI squib on postlabial rounding

December 12, 2024

Maksymilian Dąbkowski published a squib on "A Q-Theoretic Solution to A’ingae Postlabial Rounding" in Linguistic Inquiry. The paper can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00550. Congrats, Maks!

Berkeley linguists at NWAV

October 31, 2024

There will be six talks by Berkeley linguists at NWAV 52 in Miami, November 7-9, 2024:

Amber Galvano: "Measuring Sibilants in Speech & Sexuality Research: Beyond Spectral Moments" Anna Knall: "Gender Assignment Variation in Spanish-English Mixed Noun Phrases" Nicole Holliday: “'I Don’t Like My Conversations Being Judged By an AI'”: Issues of Bias and Quality in Social Feedback Speech Technology" Julia Peck: "Multilingualism and Gender Assignment:Three Parallel Systems for Loanwords in Istanbul Judeo-Spanish?" Rhosean Asmah: "Coronal Stop Deletion in Megan Thee Stallion's Rap and Speech" Niko Schwarz: "Phonetics of Liquid Neutralization in Isla Margarita, Venezuela"

Congrats, all!

Pfiffner gives colloquium talk

October 15, 2024

Alexandra Pfiffner is giving a colloquium talk at the University of Manitoba on October 18, titled "An audiovisual phonetic analysis of the Mandarin sibilant merger." Congrats!

Several Berkeley linguists publish in Vowel Harmony handbook

October 15, 2024
The Oxford Handbook of Vowel Harmony (Nancy A. Ritter & Harry van der Hulst, editors), has just appeared in print with several contributions by current and former Berkeley linguists: 2. The role of consonants in vowel harmony, Gunnar Ólafur Hansson (PhD 2001) 13. Phonology that will not harmonize, Larry M. Hyman 39. Psycholinguistic approaches to vowel harmony, Anne Pycha (PhD 2008) and Sara Finley 51. Vowel harmony in non-Bantu Niger-Congo languages, Nicholas Rolle (PhD 2018) and Olanike Ola Ori 68. Umlaut in Germanic languages, Gunnar Ólafur Hansson (PhD 2001) and Richard Wiese https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-vowel-harmony-9780198826804?cc=fr&lang=en&# Congrats, all!