Jayhawks at the fall Acoustical Society of America in Honolulu. From left to right: Dr. Annie Olmstead (SPLH), Quentin Qin, Dr. Maite Martinez-Garcia (Ph.D. 2016, now at Texas A&M University-Commerce), Charlie Redmon, Dr. Allard Jongman, Dr. Goun Lee (Ph.D. 2015, now at Yonsei University, South Korea), Seulgi Shin, Dr. Annie Tremblay, Dr. Joan Sereno, Dr. Yue Wang (honorary Jayhawk, at Simon Fraser University, Canada), Dr. Jie Zhang, and Katrina Connell. Seated in the foreground is Dr. Navin Viswanathan (SPLH). Also present at the meeting were Dr. Olga Dmitrieva (M.A. 2005, now at Purdue University) and Tiffani Biro (SPLH).

WCCFL 2018 Conference. Phil Duncan (KU), Zhou Chen (UCLA), Andrew McKenzie (KU), Travis Major (UCLA), Harold Torrence (UCLA), Jie Zhang (KU)

Picture of Donald at the 24th Mid-Continental Phonetics and Phonology Conference last weekend, taken by Kelly Berkson.

Prof. Allard Jongman, 2019 Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, for distinguished contributions to the field of speech science, particularly using cross-linguistic and state-of-the-art acoustic and behavioral methods for understanding the phonetic properties of language.

KU Linguistics was well represented at the recent Tonal Aspects of Languages conference held in Buffalo, NY. From left to right: Katrina Connell, doctoral student, Allard Jongman, Jiang Liu (PhD 2013), Yu-Fu Chien (PhD 2016), Joan Sereno, Jie Zhang, and Yue Wang (honorary Jayhawk).

Patrick Connelly presenting at the 2016 Undergraduate Research Symposium

John-Patrick Doherty presenting at the 2016 Undergraduate Research Symposium

Keonya Jackson presenting at the 2016 Undergraduate Research Symposium

Graduate students Nick Feroce & Xiao Yang in the Neurolinguistics lab.

Undergraduate student, Tessa Scott in Tanzania studying Swahili.

Dr. Zhang collecting data on a Hakka dialect of Chinese.

The Linguistics Department at KU offers a full range of degrees: B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. The first linguistics courses at KU were offered in 1957. In 1968, Linguistics became a department and was authorized to offer a Ph.D. degree. Today, the unique strength of the Linguistics department is the systematic pairing of theoretical and experimental investigations of linguistic knowledge. Its nucleus of full-time faculty members in Linguistics, plus several actively involved faculty members in other departments, serves a student body of about 35 graduate students, 80 undergraduate majors, and many non-majors taking introductory and intermediate courses each semester.

Areas of special strength in the graduate program include Phonetics, Phonology, Syntax, First and Second Language Acquisition, Psycholinguistics, Neurolinguistics, Semantics, and Indigenous Languages. The department also cooperates with other departments, such as Speech-Language-Hearing, Child Language, Indigenous Nations Studies, Anthropology, Education, and Psychology.

Linguistics Colloquy Schedule

Fall 2021 TBD

Faculty & Graduate Student Publications

(Abstracts & Publication Links)

2020

Chien, Y-F., Yang, X, Fiorentino, R., & Sereno, J.A. (2020). The role of the surface and underlying forms when processing tonal alternations in Mandarin Chinese: A mismatch negativity study. Frontiers in Psychology: Language Sciences, 11, #646, 1-17.
Cho, S., Jongman, A., Wang, Y., & Sereno, J.A. (2020). Multi-modal cross-linguistic perception of fricatives in clear speech. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 147(4), 2609-2624.
Dmitrieva, O., Jongman, A., & Sereno, J.A. (2020). The effect of instructed second language learning on the acoustic properties of first language speech. Languages, 5(4), 44-77.
Duncan, P.T. & Torrence, H. (2020). Headless relatives in Meꞌphaa from Iliatenco. In I. Caponigro, H. Torrence, & R. Zavala, (eds.), Headless Relative Clauses in Mesoamerican Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Feroce, N., Fiorentino, R., Covey, L., and Gabriele, A. (2020). Neural evidence for the processing of referential ambiguity and referential failure in Spanish. In D. Pascual y Cabo & I. Elola (eds.), Current Theoretical and Applied Perspectives on Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 153-174. John Benjamins.
Fiorentino, R. (2020). “Brain imaging online” KU CTE Special Issue: Engaging Ideas for Flexible Teaching.
Gabriele, A. (2020). Microvariation and transfer in L2 and L3 Acquisition. (Commentary on Westergaard, 2019 keynote article). Second Language Research, 1-5.
Garg, S., Hamarneh, G., Jongman, A., Sereno, J.A., & Wang, Y. (2020). ADFAC: Automatic detection of facial articulatory features. MethodsX, 7, 101006, 1-12.
Jongman, A. and Sereno, J.A. (2020). Obituary: Wendy Herd (1973-2020). Acoustics Today. Winter, 16(4), 93.
Jongman, A., & Tremblay, A. (2020). Word prosody in L2. In C. Gussenhoven & A. Chen (eds.), The Oxford handbook of language prosody (pp. 594–604). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McKenzie, A. and Punske, J. (2020). Language development during interstellar travel. Acta Futura: Journal of the Advance Concepts Team, European Space Agency 12: 123-132.
Pham. C., Covey, L., Gabriele, A., Aldosari, S., and Fiorentino, R. (2020). Examining individual differences and island sensitivity. Glossa: a Journal of General Linguistics 5(1), 94.
Redmon, C., Leung, K., Wang, Y., McMurray, B., Jongman, A., & Sereno, J.A. (2020). Cross-linguistic perception of clearly spoken English tense and lax vowels based on auditory, visual, and auditory-visual information. Journal of Phonetics, 81.
Reetz, H., & Jongman, A. (2020). Phonetics: Transcription, Production, Acoustics, and Perception. (2^nd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell Publishers (316 pages). [The Chinese translation of this book was published in March 2019].
Tang, W. and Zhang, J. (2020). The effects of era and perceptual distinctiveness on Japanese loanword adaptation. In Shoichi Iwasaki, Susan Strauss, Shin Fukuda, Sun-Ah Jun, Sung-Ock Sohn, and Kie Zuraw (eds.), Japanese/Korean Linguistics, vol. 26. CSLI, Stanford University, CA.
Tupper, P., Leung, K., Wang, Y., Jongman, A., & Sereno, J.A. (2020). Characterizing the distinctive acoustic cues of Mandarin tones. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 147, 2570-2580.
Wang, Y., Sereno, J.A., & Jongman, A. (2020). Multi-modal perception of tone. In H-M. Liu, F-M. Tsao, and P. Li (Eds.), Speech Perception, Production, and Acquisition: Multidisciplinary Approaches in Chinese Languages. Springer series on Chinese Language Learning Sciences, Ch.8 (159-173).
Yan, H., Chien, Y-F., & Zhang, J. (2020). Priming the representation left-dominant sandhi words: a Shanghai dialect case study. Language and Speech, 63(2), 362-380.
Yates, Y. & Gluckman, J. (2020). Voice Reversals and Syntactic Structure: Evidence from Hittite. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5(1): 120. 1-39.
Zhang, J., San D., & Chen Y. (2020). Chinese and Siberia. In Carlos Gussenhoven and Aoju Chen (eds.), The Oxford handbook of language prosody, 332-343. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

More Publications, Abstracts & Website Links

News

Graduate Student Presentations

Bates, J. (2017). The Essential Role of Indigenous Languages in Identifying Language Universals: The Case of Mayan Person-Making. Talk presented at the Graduate Research Symposium at University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. More>>
Bates, J. (2017). The effect of a diminutive on Tseltal Person Marking, One Possessor: Two Agreements? Talk presented at the 50th Anniversary of KU Linguistics at University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. More>>
Bates, J. (2017). Multiple Exponence in Oxchuc Tseltal. Talk presented at the Conference on Indigenous Languages of Latin America (CILLA) VIII at University of Texas-Austin, Austin, TX. More>>
Chien, Y-F., Fiorentino, R., Yang, X., & Sereno, J. (2016). Surface phonetic or underlying phonological representations: A mismatch negativity study of Mandarin tone assimilation. Poster presented at the 5th Joint Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and Acoustical Society of Japan. Honolulu, HI. More>>
Cho, S., Jongman, A., Wang, Y., & Sereno, J. A. (2017). Effects of clear speech and language background on multimodal perception of English fricatives. 174th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), New Orleans, Louisiana. More>>
Covey, L., Gabriele, A., & Fiorentino, R. (2017). "Investigating island sensitivity in the processing of wh- dependencies: An ERP study." Poster presented at 30th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing. MIT. More>>
Covey, L., Girolamo, T., Siew, C., Weyers, I., Yang, X., Vogt-Woodin, A., Coughlin, C., & Minai, U. (2017). Examining the role of pragmatics during children's comprehension of only: An eye-tracking study. Poster presented at the 42nd Boston University Conference on Language Development. Boston, MA. More>>
Covey, L., Fiorentino, R., & Gabriele, A. (2018). Individual differences in the processing of wh-dependencies by native speakers and L2 learners: An ERP investigation. Talk presented in colloquium: “Event-related potentials and SLA: Brainwaves reveal new insights about individual differences in second language learning and processing,” organized by Sarah Grey & Harriet Bowden. American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) 2018. Chicago, IL. More>>

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