Recent news

Welcome to the Spring 2024 labbies!

By PAMLabJanuary 15th, 2024in Students, Visitors

Welcome to the seven new students who will be joining the lab this spring:

  • Jade Ling Garstang (BU GRS ’25) is a first-year MA student in Linguistics. She is interested in language variation, speech perception, and Asian languages, particularly indigenous ones like the Japanese Ryukyuan languages.
  • Madelyn (Maddie) Jin (CAS ’26) is a second-year student minoring in Linguistics and majoring in Computer Science. She is currently working on a UROP-funded project involving the speech rhythm of Asian-American English. Her broader interests include bilingualism, phonetics, and natural language processing.
  • Iliad Nazari is a third-year undergraduate student in Linguistics at the University of Minnesota. He is very interested in Central Asian languages. His research interests are in phonetics, language acquisition, and the psycholinguistics of multilingualism.
  • Jupitara Ray (GRS '25) is a fourth-year PhD student in Linguistics, broadly interested in phonetics and phonology, sociolinguistics, bi/multi-lingualism in the diasporic community, etc. A research fellow in the lab in Spring 2024, she is currently working on her dissertation prospectus on phonetic accommodation and drift of Indian English speakers in India and the US.
  • Liza Sulkin (GRS ’26) is a third-year PhD student in Linguistics. Her research interests include fast speech phenomena in Slavic languages, tongue twister production in native and non-native speakers and sociophonetics of lesbian speech. Currently, she is working on an acoustic analysis of lesbian women’s spontaneous speech to examine differences in production based on speakers’ self-described gender presentation.
  • Rebecca (Becca) Wheeler (BU GRS ’27) is a second-year PhD student in Linguistics completing a qualifying paper in the lab, tentatively entitled “Effect of non-native articulation rate on foreigner-directed speech production”.
  • Xuehan (Annie) Xie (BU GRS ’24) is a first-year MA student in Linguistics. Her interests encompass the intersection of language acquisition, bilingualism/multilingualism, Mandarin phonology, and syntax.

And a warm welcome back to Jason and Sara!

Chang at UF

By PAMLabNovember 21st, 2023in Faculty, Presentations

Next week, Prof. Chang will be giving a talk in the University of Florida's Language and Brain series on December 1. The title of his talk (on joint work with Dr. Esther de Leeuw, University of Lausanne) is "Introducing ADAPPT: A theoretical framework for research on bilingual speech".

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Brown-Bousfield & Chang in JBP book

By PAMLabOctober 10th, 2023in Faculty, Publications, Students

A paper entitled "Regressive cross-linguistic influence in multilingual speech rhythm: The role of language similarity" (Brown-Bousfield & Chang, 2023) has been published by John Benjamins Publishing in the edited volume L3 Development After the Initial State.

Abstract: While previous work on multilingual speech rhythm has found evidence of progressive cross-linguistic influence of a first or second language (L1, L2) on a third language (L3), regressive cross-linguistic influence (rCLI) in rhythm remains understudied. In the current study, we tested the roles of order of acquisition and of language similarity in shaping rCLI from syllable-timed Spanish as L3 to stress-timed English and German as L1/L2. In a picture narration task, adult sequential trilinguals (L1 English-L2 German-L3 Spanish, L1 German-L2 English-L3 Spanish) and sequential bilingual controls (L1 English-L2 German, L1 German-L2 English) produced semi-spontaneous speech in each of their languages, which was analyzed in terms of the rhythm metric VarcoV. Results showed evidence of rCLI in English (the typologically more similar language to Spanish) but no evidence of rCLI in German; however, rCLI in English was found only when English was the L1. On the basis of these findings, we propose the Similarity Convergence Hypothesis (SCH), which claims that previously acquired languages that are more similar to a later-acquired language are relatively more vulnerable to rCLI from this language.

This study followed Open Science practices, and all data and materials are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/pvmea/.

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Welcome to the Fall 2023 labbies!

By PAMLabAugust 28th, 2023in Students, Visitors, Welcome

Welcome to the new students who will be joining the lab this fall:

  • Sara Hockett (GRS '28) is a first-year PhD student in Linguistics. Her research interests include second language acquisition, phonological theory, and multilingualism interactions. She’s specifically looking to examine how the transfer or inhibition from one’s first language to the learning of a second can inform broader phonological theories related to sonority.
  • Jason Wang is a rising senior at Concord Carlisle High School. He is interested in phonetics, acquisition, multilingualism, and the neuroscience of language and speech production.

And a warm welcome back to Felix and Jackson!