Abby Walker

I'm a sociophonetician (or phonesociolinguist?) using primarily experimental methods to investigate what speech production, speech perception, and people perception (based on speech), can tell us about language cognition. 

I'm co-director of The Speech Lab at Virginia Tech, teach for the Language Sciences Minor at VT, and a member of VTLx. I’m an Associate Editor for the Journal of Laboratory Phonology. I've been heavily involved in organizing SECOL 2018, SVALP 2016, CUNY 2014, CIMSA, and the Workshop on Social Meaning.

AJWALKER@VT.EDU Here's my CV! Below you can access full text publications!

Walker, Abby (2024). Making things easier: The pragmatism behind second dialect acquisition. In V. Fernandez-Mallat & J. Nycz (eds.) Dialect Contact: From Speaker to Community-Based Perspectives, pp. 183-200, Georgetown University Press.

García Christina, Abby Walker & Mary Beaton (2023). Exploring the Role of Phonological Environment in Evaluating Social Meaning: The Case of /s/ Aspiration in Puerto Rican Spanish. Languages, 8(3):186.

Walker, Abby & Alexander McAllister (2023). (Un)Varied Experiences: How exposure to variability impacts speech perception. In M. Diaz-Campos & S. Balasch (eds.), The Handbook of Usage-Based Linguistics, pp. 491-508, John Wiley & Sons.

Hargrave, Rachel*, Amy Southall* and Abby Walker (2022). Differences in final /z/ realization in Southwest and Northern Virginia. American Speech, 97(3):311-344.

Walker, Abby, Katie Drager & Jennifer Hay (2022). The use of priming in language attitudes research. In L. Zipp & R. Kircher (eds.), Research Methods in Language Attitudes, pp. 313-329, Cambridge University Press.

Yu, Jessie*, Molly Purtill*, Lily Carroll*, Sara Carter*, Jessica Taylor* & Abby Walker (2022). Ideologies of Intelligibility Onscreen: The sociolinguistics of intralingual subtitling. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 28 (2).

Walker, Abby, Carla Fernandez & Janet van Hell (2020). The effect of talker identity on dialect processing. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 26 (2).

Walker, Abby (2020). Voiced stops in the command performance of Southern US English. In Irina Shport & Wendy Herd (eds.), The Southern United States: Social Factors and Language Variation, a special issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 147:1, 606-615.

Walker, Abby (2019). The role of dialect experience in topic-based shifts in speech production. Language Variation and Change, 31(2): 135-163.

Hay, Jennifer, Abby Walker, Kauyumari Sanchez & Kirsty Thompson (2019). Abstract social categories facilitate access to socially skewed words. PLOS ONE, pone.0210793: 1–29.

Walker, Abby (2018). The effect of long-term second dialect exposure on sentence transcription in noise. Journal of Phonetics, 71: 162–176.

Walker, Abby, Jennifer Hay, Katie Drager & Kauyumari Sanchez (2018). Divergence in speech perception. Linguistics, 56(1): 257–278.

Mitchell, David, Marivic Lesho & Abby Walker (2017). Folk perception of African American English regional variation. Journal of Linguistic Geography, 5(1): 1–16.

Clopper, Cynthia & Abby Walker (2017). Effects of lexical competition and dialect exposure on phonological priming. Language and Speech, 60(1): 85–109.

Walker, Abby (2016). Advantage Accented? Listener differences in understanding speech in noise. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 21(2): 181–189.

Walker Abby, & Kathryn Campbell-Kibler (2015). Repeat what after whom? Exploring variable selectivity in a cross-dialectal shadowing task. Frontiers in Psychology, 6(546): 1–18.

Hay, Jennifer, Janet Pierrehumbert, Abby Walker & Patrick LaShell (2015). Tracking word frequency effects through 130 years of sound change. Cognition, 139: 83–91.

Walker, Abby (2014). The role of syntax in rating voices and voices in rating syntax in New Zealand English. New Zealand English Journal, 28: 21–42.

Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn, Abby Walker, Shontael Elward & Katie Carmichael (2014). Apparent time and network effects on long-term cross-dialect accommodation among college students. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 20(2): 21–29.

Walker, Abby, Christina García, Yomi Cortés & Kathryn Campbell-Kibler (2014). Comparing social meanings across listener and speaker groups: the indexical field of Spanish /s/. Language Variation and Change, 26: 169–189.

Love, Jessica & Abby Walker (2013). Football versus football: Effect of topic on /r/ realization in American and English sports fans. Language and Speech, 56(4): 443–460.

Wanjema, Shontael, Katie Carmichael, Abby Walker, & Kathryn Campbell-Kibler (2013). The OhioSpeaks Project: Engaging undergraduates in sociolinguistic research. American Speech, 88(2): 223–235.

Hay, Jennifer, Abby Walker, Jayne McKenzie, & Daniel Nielsen (2012). The changing realization of ‘the’ before vowels in New Zealand English." New Zealand English Journal, 26: 23–32.

Walker, Abby & Jennifer Hay (2011). Congruence between ‘word age’ and ‘voice age’ facilitates lexical access. Laboratory Phonology, 1(2): 219–237.

Drager, Katie, Jennifer Hay, & Abby Walker (2010). Pronounced rivalries: Attitudes and speech production. Te Reo, 53: 27–53.

Walker, Abby (2007). The effect of phonetic detail on perceived speaker age and social class. In J. Trouvain & W. J. Barry (eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), Saarbrucken, Germany, August 6–10.

Docherty, Gerry, Jennifer Hay & Abby Walker (2006) Sociophonetic patterning of phrasefinal /t/ in New Zealand English. In P. Warren & C. Watson (eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science & Technology, Auckland, New Zealand, December 6–8.