| My research is about human
speech sounds. Languages put many restrictions on their
speech sounds - where they can appear and in what combination.
My work focuses on where such restrictions come from, with
particular emphasis on the part of brain that's devoted to the
symbolic representation of speech sound -- the 'phonological
module'.
There are some things that languages never do. For
example, many languages avoid sequences of vowels by inserting a
consonant between them; some insert a [t], others
an [r]; but no language ever inserts a [k] even though there are
good phonetic (and often historical) reasons to do so.
Markedness (2006) presents a phonological theory
that aims to account for this and many similar facts... [read
more]
My work on markedness has provided a way to understand
glossolalia; a subtype of this phenomenon is 'speaking in
tongues'. The results of this research will be released late
in 2007.
The majority of work on word stress acknowledges the importance
of three factors in where word stress appears: word edges,
syllable size ('weight'), and rhythm. However, there are two
other major influences: tone and sonority. In some
languages, word stress seeks out higher toned syllables; in others
it seeks out a higher sonority vowel. These phenomena are
only part of the broader study of intra-prosodic interaction:
where prosodic elements (tone, sonority, structure) influence the
form and position of other prosodic elements. My chapter in
the Cambridge Handbook of Phonology discusses the current
state (2007) of this research... [read more].
A good deal of my work has dealt with the influences of other
aspects of language on phonology, including word form
(morphology), sentence structure (syntax), and the component that
actuates phonological symbols (phonetics)... [read
more]
I have worked on the Polynesian language Māori for over ten
years. A lot of my work on Māori has
informed my theoretical work... [read more]
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