Research in linguistics
My primary line of work is in the phonology-phonetics interface (especially as it relates to metrical stress), the phonology-morphology interface (especially reduplication) computational modeling, and language variation.
More specifically, my recent research has focused on typological approaches to metrical phonology and the asymmetries that emerge from these typologies, especially the cases of stress clash in quantity-insensitive languages. I am also interested in the cognitive underpinnings of the perception of speech sounds, and am working on a collaborative project using MEG to investigate the effect of speech rate on phonological commitment and memory. These projects are tied together under broader questions about what the underlying timekeepers of speech sounds might look like (that is, the 'rhythm' part of what's sometimes referred to as the stress/rhythm distinction), focusing on scientifically-measurable variables.
In my work on morphosyntactic variation, I have been a part of a team investigating the choice between preterite and participle forms of verbs in specific past tense contexts; this paper has been accepted to the journal American Speech [preprint here] [earlier poster version here]
In addition, I have a long-term project in phonological theory that looks at subtypes of reduplication, particularly what we call `echo reduplication'. This project has two primary goals: (i) to work on building a typology of known patterns to facilitate comparison and (ii) to question the assumptions (and details) of our theories of phonological correspondence.
Outside of my own research, I contribute as a writer to a number of places. For the Machine Learning for Language Lab at NYU's Center for Data Science, I've developed reading comprehension questions used to test computational models for understanding in long passages. The first of these projects has already published an article about their dataset for benchmarking [preprint link here]
Before NYU
I graduated in 2017 from Washington University in St. Louis with my B.A. in linguistics, Spanish, and music. My senior honors thesis (titled Generating Phenomenal Accent Patterns for Typological Analysis) applied theoretical distinctions from music theory to linguistic metrical stress theory via a computational approach. This project was advised by Brett Hyde and Kristin Van Engen. I have continued to develop this work in graduate school [handout from conference talk here]
To see my full CV, click here
Materials from recent presentations
Poster from NWAV48, '"I've always spoke(n) like this, you see": Participle Leveling in Three Corpora of English'
Handout from my presentation at PhoNE 2019, 'A Typology of Phenomenal Accent Patterns'
This page will be updated with my other research projects shortly; in the meantime, feel free to send me an email.