Recent news
Congrats to Michael Fang
Congratulations to rising senior Linguistics major Michael Fang (CAS '21), whose abstract with Prof. Chang was accepted for presentation at the 45th Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD 45) in November! Their poster will report on the results of Michael's UROP research:
- Michael Fang & Charles B. Chang: “Testing the role of the L1 in L2 connected speech production”
Given previous evidence of crosslinguistic influence (CLI) of the L1 in L2 speech, this study tested the explanatory power of the L1 in accounting for L2 connected speech. Comparing late L2 learners of English from an L1 Mandarin background with L1 English speakers, we examined production of three types of word boundaries in spontaneous connected English speech (nasal-to-vowel, lateral-to-vowel, vowel-to-vowel), perceptually coding each boundary for connectedness and following prominence. Results showed no clear CLI from Mandarin in learners’ connected speech, suggesting that, at least at more advanced stages of L2 development, the L1 plays little to no role in L2 connected speech: disparities between L1 and L2 speakers that would follow from CLI do not occur, while disparities that do occur cannot be explained by CLI. These findings thus highlight the limitations of an L1-based approach and, consequently, the need to engage other explanations for L2 connected speech production.
Congrats to Aspen Bombardo
Congratulations to Aspen Bombardo, whose proposal with Prof. Chang was accepted for presentation at the 2020 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Convention! Unfortunately, the convention has been canceled due to COVID-19. The proposal would have reported the results of Aspen's UROP research:
- Aspen Bombardo & Charles B. Chang: “Variation in production of English consonant clusters by Asian American bilinguals”
Barnes & Lindsey at LabPhon17
Faculty affiliates will be presenting at next week's Conference on Laboratory Phonology (LabPhon17), hosted virtually by the University of British Columbia!
Prof. Barnes is giving a poster (with Drs. Nanette Veilleux, Alejna Brugos, and Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel) on "Spectral balance and phantom pitch in intonational pitch perception".
Prof. Lindsey is giving a poster (with Christian Brickhouse) on "Laboratory phonology without the lab: Evaluating articulatory specification change in a Papuan language" in the Languages on the Margins session.
Lindsey & Brown at APLL12
Lab affiliates past and present will be presenting at this week's International Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics Conference (APLL12), hosted virtually by the University of Oslo!
Lab alumna Megan Brown is giving a talk on "Variation in Ende word order".
Prof. Lindsey is delivering (with Katherine Anne Strong) an early career plenary on "Sociophonetic variation in the South Fly: Evidence from Ende", and is also giving a talk on "Capturing breadth and depth in the documentation of Ende".
Chang at HLRI12
Next week, Prof. Chang will be one of the invited speakers at the 12th Heritage Language Research Institute, to be hosted (virtually) by Penn State. The title of his presentation is "Heritage language phonetics and phonology: What’s next?".
Barnes at SP2020
Prof. Barnes will be presenting joint work (with Drs. Alejna Brugos, Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel, and Nanette Veilleux) on "How prosodic prominence influences fricative spectra in English" at this week's International Conference on Speech Prosody (Speech Prosody 2020), hosted virtually by the University of Tokyo.
Welcome to this summer’s labbies!
Welcome to the three students who will be joining the lab this summer (virtually):
- Nolan Holley (interning from June 8 to August 21) is a rising junior double-majoring in Mathematics and Russian at Williams College. His interests are in phonetics, pronunciation, sound change, language evolution, and language acquisition.
- Lena Venkatraman (interning from May 18 to August 21) is a rising junior majoring in Linguistics at Yale University. Her interests are in phonetics and phonology, second (and additional) language acquisition, and the multilingual mind.
- Yanwan Zhu (interning from June 1 to July 31) is a rising senior double-majoring in Linguistics and Statistical & Data Sciences at Smith College. Her interests are in language acquisition, bilingualism, phonetics, language attrition, and language change.
And a warm welcome back to Michael, Felix, and Kevin!
Congrats to UROP recipient Michael Fang
Congratulations to Michael Fang, who was awarded an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) grant -- specifically, a Humanities Scholars Award -- to continue working on research in Summer 2020! Below is a brief description of the project he will be working on:
- Jiangnan (Michael) Fang: “De-linking between words in conversational English by native speakers of Mandarin”
In Summer 2020, Michael will acoustically analyze speech recordings from interviews with native Mandarin speakers who learned English as a second language, with a focus on their production of connected speech phenomena such as resyllabification and glottalization.
Prof. Chang at CUNY
This week, Prof. Chang will be in New York to give a colloquium at the CUNY Graduate Center. The presentation, scheduled for February 6, is entitled "L3 perception as a window onto similarity and timing effects in acquisition".
Prof. Lindsey at St. Mark’s School
This Friday, Prof. Lindsey will be in Southborough to deliver the keynote address for the Asian Studies Chair Installation Ceremony at St. Mark's School. Knock 'em dead, Prof. Lindsey!
