Category: Student News

Brinkerhoff and McGuire in JASA Express Letters

PhD student Myke Brinkerhoff and Professor Grant McGuire just saw an article, “Using residual H1* for voice quality research”, appear in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,  Express Letters.

One of the most common ways of assessing voice quality is through the spectral slope measure H1*–H2*. However, Chai and Garellek [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 152(3), 1856–1870 (2022)] propose and demonstrate the robustness of a new measure—residual H1*. In this study, we test the reliability of residual H1* in capturing voice quality contrasts in Santiago Laxopa Zapotec. We find that residual H1* is a more robust measure of voice quality than H1*–H2* and can capture the differences in voice quality in Santiago Laxopa Zapotec, which supports the use of this measure in voice quality research.

Paramore in Phonology

Fourth-year PhD student Jonathan Paramore had a journal article appear in Phonology in its latest issue: “Codas are universally moraic.”

Mismatches in weight criteria across weight-sensitive processes within individual languages present difficulties for theories of moraic structure, particularly regarding coda weight. Previous accounts, which stipulate that codas are variably moraic to account for the typological variation in the weight status of CVC for primary stress, make incorrect predictions for the status of CVC in other weight-sensitive phenomena, including tone, word minimality and secondary stress, among others. This article proposes a theory of Uniform Moraic Quantity coupled with a new syllable weight metric as a solution, which captures CVC’s flexible weight status while maintaining the cross-linguistic moraicity of codas and avoiding the incorrect predictions that frustrate the standard variable-weight approach.

Four undergraduates receive THI Fellowships

Four linguistics students have been awarded Undergraduate Research Fellowships from the Humanities Institute (THI):

  • Katie Arnold (“Nonnative perception of Italian consonant length contrast”)
  • Sam Beatty (“Sociophonetic study on pitch manipulation in transgender speakers”)
  • Josh Lieberstein (“Verbless clauses in Mayan K’iche’: A non-copular approach”)
  • Elliot Mcwhinnie (“Zooming in on the regional differences of African American Language in California)

In addition, Elliot was awarded the Bertha N. Melkonian Prize for the top undergraduate research proposal in the humanities.

These fellowships provide financial support for excellent undergraduate research projects. In addition, recipients will present their research at the Humanities Spring Awards ceremony in May. 

Congratulations, Elliot, Josh, Katie, and Sam!

Andrew Kato and Eli Sharf at Amsterdam Colloquium

Andrew Kato (left) and Eli Sharf (right)

At the Amsterdam Colloquium 2024 this past December, PhD student Eli Sharf and undergraduate student Andrew Kato presented their latest research. Eli delivered a presentation titled “What Appositives Can Tell Us About Names and Definite Descriptions”. Andrew presented “Relative Quantification and Equative Scope-Taking.”

In addition, several other UCSC linguists and alumni presented their latest research as well: Natasha Korotkova (Utrecht), in collaboration with Pranav Anand, discussed joint research in their talk titled “Facts, Intentions, Questions: English ‘Coming-to-Know’ Predicates in Deliberative Environments.” Jack Duff (PhD 2023), in collaboration with Daniel Altshuler, presented “Reanalysis in Discourse Comprehension: Evidence from Reading Times”. Hitomi Hirayama (PhD 2019) presented “A Pragma-Semantic Account for Negative Island Obviation by wa in Japanese”, and Tom Roberts (PhD 2021) delivered a talk titled “Just-Asking Questions”.

The proceedings are available here.

Andrew Kato featured in THI Undergrad Profile

Andrew, a linguistics major, was recently featured in the THI Undergraduate Profile.

Andrew Kato

Andrew participated in the inaugural Undergraduate Research Fellows in Linguistics and Language Science (URFLLS) program and has been working with Professor Pranav Anand, The Humanities Institute Faculty Director and Linguistics Professor, since Spring 2024.

Read more about the story on the THI website, or employing humanities news and stories site.

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