Maria Giavazzi

My research asks how sound patterns emerge from the way speech is produced and perceived. I focus on the phonetics–phonology interface, especially how lexical stress shapes articulation, acoustic structure, and sound change. Combining articulatory, acoustic, and perceptual experiments, I investigate why speech contrasts are strengthened, weakened, or reorganized across languages and over time. I am also interested in how linguistic knowledge interacts with broader cognitive systems, including in language impairment.

I have been awarded a research grant by the French national science foundation (ANR, Agence nationale de la Recherche): 

The role of phonetic substance in prosodic conditioning: From diachrony to synchrony, and back

Abstract:

Cross-linguistically, segments occurring in prosodically prominent positions manifest on the one hand a resistance to phonological processes and to neutralization, and on the other hand, they are frequently the target of a small class of phonological processes. This project proposes a unified, phonetically based account of these two seemingly divergent behaviors. It combines three perspectives in a novel way. First, the study of the perceptual precursors of these processes. Second, the study of the acoustic, articulatory and aerodynamic properties of the segments involved in these processes, to test the hypothesis that the typology emerges diachronically from the phonetic effects of prominence enhancement. Third, the study of whether – and how – these precursors are encoded in the synchronic grammar of the learner. The project brings together a wide range of experimental methodologies thanks to a multidisciplinary collaboration of researchers with complementary expertise.

My collaborators on this project are: Riccardo Orrico (project's post-doc; LSCP, DEC - ENS-PSL), Bowei Shao (LPP, UMR7018, CNRS-Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle) Ioana Chitoran (UFR Linguistique, Université de Paris), Cécile Fougeron (LPP, UMR7018, CNRS-Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle), Anne Hermes (LPP, UMR7018, CNRS-Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle), Sharon Peperkamp (LSCP, DEC - ENS-PSL)