Research Interests

My research focuses on language change and variation, especially sound change, drawing on an interdisciplinary mix of theory and methodology from historical and socio-linguistics, phonetics and psycholinguistics.

My dissertation explores the interaction of the theoretical underpinnings of sound change with modern experimental techniques in speech perception and production, by recreating the effects of sound change in a laboratory setting, in order to measure these effects on talkers and listeners so that we may fill in the gaps in the existing theories. I am also interested in usage-based, probabilistic models of synchronic phonology and their implications for sound change.

Another main interest is in the historical development and diachronic and synchronic variation in the dental fricatives. The dental fricatives are unique in that they are not differentiated from each other orthographically. A comparison of variation in the dental fricatives with that of related sounds gives us an opportunity to look at the role of orthography in variation and sound change.

I am also co-authoring (with Mary Beckman and Anouschka Foltz) a textbook for Ling 286 - Analyzing the sounds of language, which is a course that uses phonetics to guide students through data analysis and statistics. We believe that numeracy is as important as literacy, and that students should have access to compelling real life data. Data do not appear ex nihilo and it is, at best, a waste of time (though we believe these practices may actually contribute to the bad statistics prevalent today) to teach data analysis as if the data don't matter. This is why we provide real data from real language examples, that are interesting and accessible, especially to students of linguistics, but also to anyone who finds language interesting, including general humanities students. Course materials may be found here.

Presentations, Papers, and Posters

From NWAV 40 at Georgetown: Effects of frequency on sound change

From the 16th Mid-Continental Workshop on Phonology held Oct 29-31 at Northwestern University: Role of prototypicality and frequency on phoneme processing

From the Workshop on Sound Change, hosted by the UAB on Oct 20-21, 2010 in Barcelona: The incomplete phonologization of the non-sibilant dental fricatives in American English.

My second qualifying paper, accepted March, 2010: Eth and Theta: A tale of two phonemes (get your copy before it's published)

From ICHL 2009 in Nijmegen: Putting together the pieces: An intra-disciplinary look at sound change

The powerpoint slide show as presented at ICHL 2007 in Montreal: Eth - Forsake thigh name!

The follow-up to this project, as presented at GLAC-14, May 2-4, 2008 in Madison, WI: The inconvenient truth about sound change: lessons from modern variation

The completely different version of this paper that appears in the ICHL 2007 Proceedings: Dental fricatives and stops in Germanic: deriving diachronic processes from synchronic variation

The paper that contains the phonetic analysis which was removed from the ICHL Proceedings version: (under revision)

Here's a fun little piece where I translated a passage in Beowulf from Old English into Vedic Sanskrit, and then examined it as though it were a Vedic text: Grendurmata

And here's a talk I gave at Canfield Hall on 10/12/08, as part of a series of talks for dorm residents: S*** & F***: language, morality, and politics

A little philosophy:

Misuse of language is not so much a matter of a misplaced particle or an ill-formed verb, as it is a thwarting of the best use of language, how it allows human beings to come closer together by allowing them to bring to the outside that which is on the inside, and to see how we are all connected. A misuse of language is the intentional use of language to erect obstacles to understanding. It is the putting up of words between us in an attempt to divide, rather than bring together.