Research projects
Cross-linguistic effects on lexical processing: We are examining how listeners’ experiences with languages other than English affect how they process words with different English allophones. We are currently preparing a manuscript from this project for submission to Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. This project is an ongoing collaboration with UT Arlington graduate student Shawn Tang.
Hyperarticulation of dialect variants: We are exploring clear speech as a novel approach to addressing the actuation problem, aiming to figure out whether phonological control of new variants could originate in clear speech registers. We are currently revising a proposal to submit to the National Science Foundation, which was previously submitted to the National Science Foundation’s Build & Broaden Program and ranked high competitive. This project is an ongoing collaboration with Ivy Hauser at UT Arlington.
Me with my collaborator Ivy Hauser and students Shawn Tang and Erica Dagar at the Acoustical Society of America Meeting in Philadelphia, PA in May 2026.
Geographic mobility and lexical processing: We are studying how listeners’ experiences with dialect variation affect how they process words. We are analyzing mono-dialectals vs. multi-dialectals as well as effects of exposure to specific dialectal variants (e.g., /ai/ monophthongization). We have employed various psycholinguistic methods, including priming and eye-tracking. We are currently preparing manuscripts from this project for submission to Journal of Phonetics and Glossa: Psycholinguistics. This project is an ongoing collaboration with Cynthia Clopper at Ohio State, Abby Walker at Virginia Tech, Ohio State graduate students (Kyler Laycock, Kevin Lilley), and Ohio State undergraduate students (Larisa Bryan, Declan Chandler-Holtz).
Me with my collaborators Cynthia Clopper and Kyler Laycock at the Acoustical Society of America Meeting in Philadelphia, PA in May 2026.
Me with my collaborator Abby Walker at the Acoustical Society of America in New Orleans, LA in May 2025.
Pre-voiceless diphthong raising in several U.S. cities: We are investigating the phonetic origin, diachronic implementation, and phonologization of pre-voiceless /ai/ and /au/ raising among American English speakers in Indiana, Ohio, and Louisiana. This project is an ongoing collaboration with Katie Carmichael at Virginia Tech, Kelly Berkson and Stuart Davis at Indiana University, and Irina Shport at Louisiana State University.
Me with my collaborators Kelly Berkson and Monica Nesbitt at the Acoustical Society of America in New Orleans, LA in May 2025.