Speech acoustics and infant speech perception
This work has identified patterns in infant speech perception and corresponding patterns in phonological typology. The work is really at the edge of a linguistically oriented approach to speech perception and developmental psychology, and is centered on the notion of "acoustic salience" mediating infants' perception and the types of sounds found in the world's languages.
- The Visual Expectation Cueing Paradigm for infant speech perception (collaborative work with Scott Adler)
- An acoustic perspective on 45 years of infant speech perception, I: Consonants
- An acoustic perspective on 45 years of infant speech perception, I: Vowels and Suprasegmentals
- Developmental perspectives on phonological typology and sound change
- The interaction of acoustic salience and developmental speech perception
Infant-directed speech acoustics
I'm interested in what aspects of speech acoustics are modified when communicating with infants, and how it changes as infants age. Importantly, I'm interested in cross-linguistic differences in acoustic modifications in infant-directed speech. My own personal view is that infant-directed speech is acoustically highly variable and we really can't pinpoint singular acoustic characteristics of the register.
- Fragile phonetic contrasts in longitudinal infant-directed speech: Implecations for infant speech perception
- Speech rate and pitch characteristics of infant-directed speech: Longitudinal and cross-linguistics observations
- Developmental perspectives on phonological typology and sound change
Interactions between speech acoustics and higher level structure
- Lexicality matters, but we can do without: Dual routes to the perceptual learning of distorted speech (with Alina Kuimova) (submitted)
- Words get in the way: Linguistic effects on talker discrimination
Language specific acoustics, historical phonology, etc.
- Losing face in South Dravidian: Phonological and perceptual paths to debuccalization in 10th C. Kannada (in progress)
- Overtone focusing in biphonic Tuvan throat singing