Projects

Investigating L2 Accommodation of Indian English Speakers

For my NSF-DDRIG funded dissertation, I am working on the phonetics of L2 English accommodation by Indian English bilinguals, specifically examining the influence of their L1s on accommodation patterns. My dissertation is supervised by Dr. Charles Chang, my second reader is Dr Kate Lindsey, and my third reader is Dr. Esther de Leeuw. You can find details of this work on our OSF repository.

Identifying Languages and Language Usage in Daru, Papua New Guinea

I have been a part of a larger study involving a survey on language usage in Daru, Papua New Guinea. Papua New Guinea is known for its intensely diverse language communities. The survey, that took place in a school, displayed multitude of languages spoken by the resident students, and it also provided us with insight on the frequencies at which these languages are spoken.

Infant Speech Babbling Patterns in Kabyle-Berber

I collaborated with my colleagues Dalila Gauoa and Jackson Kellog on a project where we studied the speech patterns of a Kabyle-Berber speaking infant, to understand if babbling patterns exhibited in children are truly universal.

Acceptability Judgement of Backward & Copy Control Structures in Assamese

For this study, I conducted a survey to understand native Assamese speakers’ judgement on the typologically rare syntactic constructions of Backward and Copy Control in Assamese. Backward Control, which is not allowed in several of the world’s languages, was accepted by Assamese speakers under specific conditions. Copy Control structures, found in South Asian languages like Assamese and Telugu, had a higher rate of acceptability than Backward Control.

Vowel Space Area Variation in Assamese

In this study, I explore the sociophonetic variation in the vowel space of Assamese, in order to provide an empirical account of language variation and change in a socioeconomic context. Vowels varied systematically across regions, but also across different socioeconomic factors.

A Phonological Description of Koch Rajbongshi

I am also currently working on developing a phonological description of Koch Rajbongshi, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Kokrajhar, northeast India.