Recent news
Chang at PLM2021
This weekend, Prof. Chang will be one of the plenary speakers at the 50th Poznań Linguistic Meeting (PLM2020/2021). The title of his presentation is "Similarity in multilingual development and attrition".
Welcome to this fall’s labbies!
Welcome to the PhD research fellow who will be joining the lab this semester:
- Megan M. Brown is a fourth-year PhD student in Linguistics and a research fellow in the lab during the 2021-22 academic year. Her interests are in adult second and third language acquisition, cross-linguistic influence, and multilingualism. Her current work in the PAMLab focuses on regressive cross-linguistic influence in English/German/Spanish trilinguals.
And a warm welcome back to Cristina, Danielle, Felix, Jackson, Kate, Kevin, Michael, and Sam!
PAMLab at Psychonomics 2021
Lab alum Dominique Lopiccolo and Prof. Chang will be presenting a poster entitled "Cultural factors weaken but do not reverse left-to-right spatial biases in numerosity processing: Data from readers of Arabic and English" at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society (Psychonomics 2021) later this year. Congratulations to them!
PAMLab at NWAV49
Congratulations to lab affiliates on their acceptances to the 49th meeting of New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV49):
- PhD student Danielle Dionne and Prof. Chang will be giving a talk entitled "Linguistic unity and diversity among Asian Americans in Boston".
- Prof. Erker will be giving a talk entitled "Filled pauses and the conservative contours of contact-induced change - Data from Spanish in Boston".
- Prof. Erker is also a co-author (with Gregory Guy and Rafael Orozco) on the talk "Homogeneity and heterogeneity in null subjects: A cross-linguistic and cross-community comparison".
- Prof. Lindsey is chairing the symposium "Variation off the beaten path: Continuing the conversation".
- Prof. Lindsey is also a co-author (with Katherine Strong) on a talk entitled "Investigating an emergent style in Ende: Evidence from covariation of stopping and retraction by women orators in Papua New Guinea".
Chang in Abralin ao Vivo series
Next month, Prof. Chang will be giving a talk in the Abralin ao Vivo series entitled “Phonetic drift as an aspect of lifespan language development”.
The talk is free and open to the public and will be livestreamed on the Abralin ao Vivo webpage.
Chang in Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics
A review chapter entitled "Phonetics and phonology of heritage languages" (Chang, 2021) has been published in The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, edited by Profs. Silvina Montrul and Maria Polinsky.
Abstract: This chapter provides an overview of research on heritage language (HL) sound systems, with a focus on areas of convergence and divergence among heritage speakers (HSs), native speakers (NSs) who continue to be dominant in the language, and second language learners (L2ers) who acquired the language later in life. Drawing on data from a wide range of HLs, the chapter addresses both phonetic (articulatory, acoustic, perceptual) and phonological (phonemic, distributional, phonotactic) aspects of the HL sound system, as well as that of the majority language, in light of theories of bilingual speech and variables previously studied as predictors of HSs' linguistic behavior. Despite the diversity of results reviewed, several recurring themes emerge, including intermediate patterning between NSs and L2ers, a higher level of performance in perception than production, and individual variability. In particular, the depth and the accessibility of HSs' knowledge of the HL sound system show considerable variation related to structural linguistic factors, demographic and sociolinguistic factors, input and usage-based factors, and methodological factors. In addition to summarizing the areas in which there is an emerging consensus, the chapter points out a number of remaining questions that pave the way for future research on HL sound systems.
Chang & Ahn at KoHL
Prof. Chang will be speaking about joint work with Dr. Sunyoung Ahn at this week's roundtable research meeting of KoHL/콜 (Korean Heritage Language Research Group), hosted by UC Irvine! The presentation is entitled "Emotion word development in Korean-speaking children living in majority and minority contexts", and is scheduled for Wednesday, May 26 at 2pm PT / 5pm ET (UTC-7).
Welcome to this summer’s labbies!
Welcome to the five students who will be joining the lab this summer (virtually):
- Sam Angell is a rising senior at Columbia University majoring in East Asian Studies with a special concentration in Linguistics. His interests are in historical linguistics, language acquisition, multilingualism, and East Asian languages such as Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.
- Katherine (Kate) Fraser (CAS '22) is a rising senior majoring in Linguistics and minoring in History. The recipient of a UROP Humanities Scholars Award, she is interested in language acquisition and multilingualism.
- Cristina Reguera Gómez is a Fulbright Scholar from Spain completing a master's in Intercultural Communication at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). An experienced language teacher, she is interested in bilingualism/multilingualism, language acquisition, and psycholinguistics.
- Tyler Olds is a rising senior at Columbia University double-majoring in Linguistics and Philosophy. Their interests are in language acquisition, cognitive and social development, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.
- Samantha (Sam) Rigor (CAS '24) is a rising sophomore double-majoring in Linguistics and Computer Science. Her interests are in language acquisition, multilingualism, and sociolinguistics.
And a warm welcome back to Danielle, Felix, Jackson, Kevin, and Michael!
Bombardo to Vanderbilt
We're thrilled to hear that lab alum Aspen Bombardo (SAR '21) is headed to Vanderbilt University next year to start the Doctor of Audiology (AuD) program. Congratulations, Aspen! We're so proud of you!
Congrats to UROP recipient Kate Fraser
Congratulations to junior Linguistics major Kate Fraser, who was awarded an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) grant -- specifically, a Humanities Scholars Award -- to work on linguistics research in Summer 2021! Below is a brief description of the project she will be working on:
- Kate Fraser: “Listener perception and identification of Asian American speech”
In Summer 2021, Kate will conduct a perception study to examine how consistently listeners can identify Asian Americans on the basis of their English speech, how detailed such perceptual judgments are, and how listeners' own race/ethnicity and exposure to Asian Americans in their community influence their judgments.