Teaching and Advising
Teaching
I teach both undergraduate and graduate courses, including phonology, morphology, multilingualism, languages of Africa and field methods.
2023-24 Teaching schedule: Undergraduate: LIGN177 Multilingualism (Fall), LIGN111 Phonology (Winter), LIGN141 Language Structures (Spring; Graduate: LIGN211 Phonology (Winter)
Undergraduate courses taught: LIGN87 Freshman Seminar (Topics have included: Language Games and Secret Languages, Endangered Languages, Language in Hip-hop); LIGN90 Introduction to the Semitic Languages; LIGN101 Introduction to the Study of Language; LIGN108 Languages of Africa; LIGN110 Phonetics; LIGN111 Phonology; LIGN119 First and Second Language Learning: from Childhood through Adolescence; LIGN120 Morphology; LIGN141 Structure of French; LIGN151 Language History; LIGN175 Sociolinguistics; LIGN177 Multilingualism; INTL190 International Studies Senior Seminar: Language Policy and Language Planning in Africa; INTL101 Culture and Society in International Perspective
Graduate courses taught: LIGN211A Introductory Phonology; LIGN211B Non-linear Phonology (now just 211); LIGN220 Morphology; LIGN240 Field Methods and LIGN241 Fieldwork; LIGN213/215 Issues/Topics in Phonology
Advising
Current PhD Advisees
Nina Hagen Kaldhol. Nina is writing a dissertation on tonal exponence. She has worked on Somali, Norwegian, Tira and Rere.
Mark Simmons. Mark is interested in phonetics, phonology and historical linguistics. He has worked on Nadëb (Brazil), Tira (Sudan), Dendi (Benin) and Mixtec (Mexico).
Anthony Struthers-Young. Anthony is writing a grammar and working on the musical surrogate language of Northern Toussian, a language of Burkina Faso.
BA Advisees
Klaus Kim. Klaus completed a 2019 honors thesis on tone and pronominal agreement in Rere (Koalib). He is now a PhD student in Linguistics at UCLA.
Current Dissertation committees
Amanda Ritchart. (chair: Marc Garellek). The influence of voice quality on the perception of nasalization.
Claudia Duarte-Borquez. (chair: Gabriela Caballero). Tone, prosodic structure and grammatical structure in San Juan Piñas Mixtec (Tò’ōn Ndā’ví)
PhD Alumni
Neşe Demir Nalci. 2023. Laz Turkish: a case study of partially productive vowel harmony and sociolinguistic attitudes
Adam McCollum. 2019. Gradience and locality in phonology: Case studies from Turkic vowel harmony.
Hope Morgan. 2017. (co-chair w/Rachel Mayberry). The Phonology of Kenyan Sign Language (Southwestern Dialect).
Bethany Keffala 2016. (co-chair w/Jessica Barlow, SDSU). Learning to Share: Interaction in Spanish-English bilinguals’ acquisition of syllable structure and positional phonotactics
Rebecca Colavin. 2013. (co-chair w/Roger Levy). Phonotactic probability in Amharic: a psycholinguistic and computational investigation.
Nicoleta Bateman. 2007. Full and Secondary Palatalization: A Typological Study.
Linda Godson. 2003. (co-chair w/Maria Polinsky). Phonetics of Language Attrition: Vowel production and articulatory setting in the speech of Western Armenian heritage speakers.
Alicia Munoz Sanchez. 2003. The Effect of Phonological Status on the Acquisition of New Contrasts: Evidence from Spanish and Japanese L2 Learners of English.
Previous Dissertation Committees/External Examiner
Incamu Ray Huaute. (chair: Gabriela Caballero). Topics in the phonology and morphology of Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla.
Yaqian Huang. (chair: Marc Garellek). Phonetics of period doubling.
Yuan Chai. (chair: Marc Garellek). Phonetics and phonology of checked phonation, syllables, and tones.
Andres Aguilar. (chairs: Gabriela Caballero & Marc Garellek). Phonology and phonetics of laryngeal sounds in Chicontepec Nahuatl.
Kati Hout. (chair: Eric Bakovic). Conspiratorial exceptionality: a case study of Mushunguli.
Avery Ozburn. 2019. (UBC; chair: Gunnar Hansson). A Target-oriented approach to Neutrality in Vowel Harmony.
Nicholas Root. 2019. (UCSD Psychology; chair: V.S. Ramachandran). What Language Tells Us About Synesthesia, What Synesthesia Tells Us About Language.
Emebet Bekele. 2019. (Addis Ababa University; chair: Fekede Menuta). Ethnolinguistic identity and language use among speakers of Gurage varieties.
Etaferahu Hailu. 2019. (Addis Ababa University; chair: Ronny Meyer). Description of the social varieties used by the Gurage: Fedwet and Fuga.
Rosey Billington 2017. (University of Melbourne; chairs: Brett Baker & Janet Fletcher) The phonetics and phonology of the Lopit language.
Heleen Smits. 2017. (Leiden University; chairs: Maarten Kossmann & Maarten Mous). A grammar of Lumun, a Kordofanian language of Sudan.
Kevin McMullin. 2016. (UBC; chair: Gunnar Hansson). Tier-Based Locality in Long Distance Phonotactics: Learnability and Typology.
Ryan Lepic. 2015. (chairs: Farrell Ackerman & Carol Padden) Motivation in Morphology: Lexical Patterns in ASL and English.
Lucien Carroll. 2015. (chairs: Eric Bakovic & Gabriela Caballero) Ixpantepec Mixtec Word Prosody.
Jonathan Udoff. 2014. (SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Language and Communicative Disorders; Chairs: Karen Emmory and Ignatius Nip) Mouthings in American Sign Language: Biomechanical and Neurological Foundations.
Will Bennett. 2013. (Rutgers University, chair: Alan Prince) Dissimilation, Consonant Harmony, and Surface Correspondence.
Bozena Pajak. 2012. (chairs: Eric Bakovic & Roger Levy) Inductive inference in non-native speech processing and learning.
Cynthia Kilpatrick. 2009. (chair: Eric Bakovic). The Acquisition of Ungrammaticality: Learning a Subset in L2 Phonotactics.
Michael Hughes. 2003. (chair: David Perlmutter) Morphological faithfulness to Syntactic Representations.
Martha Senturia. 1998. (chair: Kathleen Hubbard). A Prosodic Theory of Hiatus Resolution.