Research
Representational phonology
My work within representational phonology has provided evidence that phonological grammars can and do manipulate subsegmental units, which are representational units smaller than the phoneme. Q Theory allows for greater granularity of representation than was previously possible by exploding segmental representations into three subsegments (q1 q2 q3), which can be seen as three temporally ordered feature bundles.
Click here to visit the Q Theory project webpage.
Lapierre, Myriam. (resubmitted). Two types of [NT]s in Panãra: Evidence for temporally ordered subsegmental units.
Lapierre, Myriam. (2020). Two types of [NT]s in Panãra: Evidence from production and perception. Poster presented at the 8th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (AMP 2020), UC Santa Cruz. [poster] [video]
Karee Garvin, Myriam Lapierre, Martha Schwarz and Sharon Inkelas. (2020). Modeling Vowel Quantity Scales in Q Theory. Proceedings of the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. Linguistic Society of America, Washington, DC. [paper]
Karee Garvin, Myriam Lapierre, Martha Schwarz and Sharon Inkelas. (2019). Modeling Vowel Quantity Scales in Q Theory. Talk to be presented at the 7th Annual Meeting on Phonology (AMP 2019), Stony Brook University, New York. [slides]
Myriam Lapierre, Tessa Scott and Karee Garvin. (2019). Morphologically conditioned (sub)segmental subtraction in Mam. Talk to be presented at the 9th Conference on Indigenous Languages of Latin America (CILLA IV), University of Texas at Austin. [slides]
Lapierre, Myriam. (2019). Two types of [NT]s in Panãra: Evidence from production and perception. Talk presented at the University of California, Berkeley colloquium series. [slides]
Martha Schwarz, Myriam Lapierre, Karee Garvin, & Sharon Inkelas. (2019). Recent Advances in Q Theory: Segment Strength. Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. Linguistic Society of America, Washington, DC. [paper]
Schwarz, Martha, Myriam Lapierre, Karee Garvin & Sharon Inkelas. (2019). Recent Advances in Q Theory: Segment Strength. Talk presented at the special session “Inside Segments” at the 93rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, New York City, NY. [slides]
Garvin, Karee, Myriam Lapierre, & Sharon Inkelas. (2018). A Q-theoretic approach to distinctive subsegmental timing. Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. Linguistic Society of America, Washington, DC. [paper]
Garvin, Karee, Myriam Lapierre & Sharon Inkelas. (2018). A Q-theoretic approach to distinctive subsegmental timing. Talk presented at The 92nd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Salt Lake City, Utah. [slides]
Language documentation and description
I have been conducting linguistic fieldwork in the Brazilian Amazon since 2015, totaling nine months of in-situ fieldwork. I have conducted extensive in-situ fieldwork on four languages of the Jê family, namely Panãra (ISO code: kre), Mẽbêngôkre (ISO code: txu), Kajkwakhrattxi (ISO code: suy-tap), and Xavante (ISO code: xav), and on one language of the Tupí-Guaraní family, Kawaiwete (ISO code: kyz). My work focuses on describing and analyzing the various aspects of the sound system of the language. I use a wide range of methodologies in conducting fieldwork, including structured elicitation, phonetic fieldwork, text collection and transcription, and participant observation.
Lapierre, Myriam. (accepted). A Phonological Analysis of Panãra. International Journal of American Linguistics.
Lapierre, Myriam. (2021). Consonantes nasales complejas en panãra. Talk presented at the 2do Coloquio Internacional de Lingüística en Bolivia, Linguistics Summer School Bolivia. [slides]
Lapierre, Myriam. (2021). A previously unattested weight scale in Panãra: CCV, CVC >> CVː, CV. Talk presented at Amazônicas VIII, Universidade de Brasíla, Brazil. [handout]
Lapierre, Myriam. (2020). Challenges of literacy education and orthography development in the Amazonian indigenous context: A case study from Panãra. Talk presented at Found in Translation, University of California, Berkeley. [slides]
Myriam Lapierre. (2020). Panãra Fieldwork Materials. University of California, Berkeley: Survey of California and Other Indian Languages. URL: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.7297/X20R9MWN.
Myriam Lapierre. (2020). Kawaiwete Fieldwork Materials. University of California, Berkeley: Survey of California and Other Indian Languages. URL: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.7297/X2Z036NC.
Myriam Lapierre, and Jérémie Beauchamp. (2020). Kajkwakhrattxi Fieldwork Materials. University of California, Berkeley: Survey of California and Other Indian Languages. URL: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.7297/X2RF5SH0.
Nicholas Carrick, Teela Huff, and Myriam Lapierre. (2020). Xavante Fieldwork Materials. University of California, Berkeley: Survey of California and Other Indian Languages. URL: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.7297/X24Q7SGG.
Lapierre, Myriam. (2018). A fonologia do panãra: Sincronia e diacronia. Talk presented at Café com Ciência, Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Belém, Brazil.
Lapierre, Myriam. (2018). Word-initial [i] epenthesis in Panãra. Poster to be presented at the 3rd conference on Sound Systems of Latin America (SSLA 3), University of Massachusetts, Amherst. [poster]
Michael, Lev, Dmetri Hayes, Myriam Lapierre, Tyler Lau, Emily Remirez, Efrain Escobar, Margaret Cychosz, & Julia Eileen Nee. (2017). Berkeley Field Methods: South Bolivian Quechua. University of California, Berkeley: Survey of California and Other Indian Languages. URL: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.7297/X2T72FMM.
Bardagil-Mas, Bernat & Myriam Lapierre. (2016). A Digital Documentation of Panará. London: SOAS, Endangered Languages Archive. URL: elar.soas.ac.uk/deposit/0418.
Bardagil-Mas, Bernat & Myriam Lapierre. (2016). A Digital Documentation of Panará. London: SOAS, Endangered Languages Archive. URL: elar.soas.ac.uk/deposit/0418.
Bardagil-Mas, Bernat & Myriam Lapierre. (2016). Challenges and successes in linguistic documentation: The case of Panará. Talk presented at Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory 5 (LDLT5), School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, United Kingdom.
Bardagil-Mas, Bernat, Myriam Lapierre, Pêrankô Panãra & Andrés Pablo Salanova. (2016). A digital dictionary of Panará. Talk presented at the 3rd Symposium on American Indian Languages (SAIL), Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York. [slides]
Lapierre, Myriam. (2015). A Reanalysis of the Phonemic Inventory of Panará. Talk presented at the Ottawa Conference for Linguistics Undergraduates and Master’s Students, University of Ottawa, Canada.
Phonological typology of nasality
My work seeks to account for the typological diversity of nasality-related phonological processes, as well as their articulatory and perceptual unity. In uncovering patterns of nasality, I work with data from a number of understudied languages and language families of the Amazon, and I make use a number of different methodologies, such as language documentation, acoustic and airflow data, and in-depth typological reviews of phonological descriptions.
Lin, Susan & Myriam Lapierre. (2020). Articulatory patterns in contrasting nasal-stop sequences in Panãra. Talk presented at the 94th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA 2020), New Orleans, Louisiana. [slides]
Lin, Susan & Myriam Lapierre. (2019). Articulatory patterns in contrasting nasal-stop sequences in Panãra. UC Berkeley Phonetics and Phonology Lab Annual Report, 1-8. [paper]
Lapierre, Myriam & Susan Lin. (2019). Cues to Panãra Nasal-Oral Stop Sequence Perception. Proceedings of the 2019 Congress of International Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2019). Melbourne, Australia. [paper]
Lapierre, Myriam & Susan Lin. (2019). Cues to Panãra Nasal-Oral Stop Sequence Perception. Talk presented at the 2019 Congress of International Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2019). Melbourne, Australia. [slides]
Lapierre, Myriam. (2019). Two types of [NT]s in Panãra: Evidence from production and perception. Talk presented at Third Symposium on Amazonian Languages (SAL3), University of California, Berkeley. [slides]
Lapierre, Myriam & Lev Michael. (2018). Nasal harmony in Tupí-Guaraní: A comparative synthesis. Talk presented at the 3rd conference on Sound Systems of Latin America (SSLA 3), University of Massachusetts, Amherst. [handout]
Lapierre, Myriam & Susan Lin. (2018). Patterns of nasal coarticulation in Panará. Poster presented at the 16th Conference on Laboratory Phonology (LabPhon16), Lisbon, Portugal. [poster]
Lapierre, Myriam & Lev Michael. (2017). Nasal segments in Tupí-Guaraní: A comparative synthesis. Talk presented at the 8th Conference on Indigenous Languages of Latin America (CILLA VIII), University of Texas at Austin. [handout]
Lapierre, Myriam. (2017). Post-oralized and devoiced nasals in Panará (Jê). Talk presented at the Workshop on Language Change for the Worse, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich, Germany. [slides]
Lapierre, Myriam. (2017). Post-oralized and devoiced nasals in Panará (Jê). Talk presented at Atelier Helan, Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage, Lyon, France.
Lapierre, Myriam. (2017). Post-oralized and devoiced nasals in Panará (Jê). Talk presented at the Symposium on Amazonian Languages II, University of California, Berkeley.
Lapierre, Myriam, Bernat Bardagil-Mas & Andrés Pablo Salanova. (2016). The Nasal Consonants of Panará. Talk presented at the 21st Workshop on the Structure and Constituency in Languages of the Americas (WSCLA 2016), Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada. [slides]
Lapierre, Myriam. (2016). The Nasal Consonants of Panará. Talk presented at the 2016 Montréal-Ottawa-Laval-Toronto (MOLT) Phonology Workshop, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.
Lapierre, Myriam. (2015). An Acoustic and Theoretical Analysis of the Nasal Vowels of Mẽbêngôkre and Panará. Poster presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting on Phonology (AMP), University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. [poster]
Diachronic phonology
My research in comparative and diachronic phonology focuses on the six extant Northern Jê languages: Panãra, Timbira, Kĩsêdjê, Kajkwakhrattxi, Mẽbêngôkre, and Apinayé. In particular, my work proposes the reconstruction of particular sound changes in various clades of the family, and on the reconstruction of phonemic inventory of Proto-Northern-Jê.
Lapierre, Myriam. (in press). Postoralized and devoiced nasals in Panãra (Jê): ND > NT . In Dankmar Enke, Thilo Weber, Larry Hyman, Johanna Nichols & Guido Seiler (eds.), Studies in Linguistic Diversity. Berlin: Language Science Press.
Huff, Teela & Myriam Lapierre. (2021). The typologically rare approximant inventory of Kajkwakhrattxi: A series of natural sound changes. Proceedings of the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. Linguistic Society of America, Washington, DC. [paper]
Huff, Teela & Myriam Lapierre. (2021). The typologically rare approximant inventory of Kajkwakhrattxi: A series of natural sound changes. Talk presented at the 95th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA 2021), San Francisco, California. [handout]
Lapierre, Myriam & Teela Huff. (2021). In support of the Panãra-Timbira clade hypothesis. Talk presented at the 23rd Annual Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL 2021), University of California, Santa Barbara. [slides]
Lapierre, Myriam. (2019). The Typology of Nasality. Talk presented at the South American Nasality Project Workshop, University of California, Berkeley. [slides]
Correlative clauses in South Bolivian Quechua
My work contributes to the typological literature on Correlative clauses (CorrCs), a subtype of internally-headed relative clauses. I presents novel data on CorrCs from South Bolivian Quechua (ISO code: quh) and provide a unified account of the syntax of CorrCs, according to which CorrCs are CPs. This analysis derives some common characteristics of CorrCs, namely the fact that they may only appear at the left edge of matrix clause and that they allow full TAM marking on the CorrC verb.
Lapierre, Myriam. (2018). Correlative clauses are CPs: Evidence from South Bolivian Quechua. Talk presented at the 23rd Workshop on the Structure and Constituency in Languages of the Americas (WSCLA 2018), University of Ottawa, Canada. [handout]
Michael, Lev, Dmetri Hayes, Myriam Lapierre, Tyler Lau, Emily Remirez, Efrain Escobar, Margaret Cychosz, & Julia Eileen Nee. (2017). Berkeley Field Methods: South Bolivian Quechua. University of California, Berkeley: Survey of California and Other Indian Languages. URL: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.7297/X2T72FMM.
The language background questionnaire in L2 research
We developed a comprehensive language background questionnaire capable of assessing and quantifying the multiple factors that affect bilingual processing. In addition to typical questions concerning age of first exposure and self-rated proficiency, we have operationalized such factors as age of immersion, manner of acquisition, and language dominance. As such, this language background questionnaire specifically targets information about immersion settings both inside and outside of the education system, as well as detailed information about language experience from infancy to adulthood, and self-reported language proficiency in five different skill areas.
Sabourin, Laura, Jean-Christophe Leclerc, Myriam Lapierre, Michèle Burkholder, & Christie Brien. (2016). The Language Background Questionnaires in L2 Research: Teasing Apart the Variables. Proceedings of the 2016 Canadian Linguistics Association Meeting. Canadian Linguistics Association, Calgary, Canada. [paper] [questionnaire]
Leclerc, Jean-Christophe, Myriam Lapierre & Michèle Burkholder. (2016). Quantifying Types of Bilingualism. Talk presented at the 2016 Canadian Centre for Studies and Research on Bilingualism and Language Planning (CCERBAL) Conference, University of Ottawa, Canada. [poster]
Sabourin, Laura, Jean-Christophe Leclerc, Myriam Lapierre, Michèle Burkholder & Christie Brien. (2016). The Language Background Questionnaire in L2 Research: Teasing Apart the Variables. Talk presented at the 2016 Conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association, University of Calgary, Canada.