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

Spring 2019

Thurs., Feb. 7, 4:00pm (Blake 206):
Linguistics Colloquy: Sarah Robins, Ph.D., (Dept. of Philosophy, KU)

Mon., Feb. 25, 3:30pm (Blake 206):
Linguistics Graduate Student Presentation: Nick Feroce

Thurs., Mar. 7, 4:00pm (Blake 206):
Linguistics Colloquy: James Bartolotti, Ph.D., (Life Span Institute, Kansas Center for Autism Research and Training, KU)

Fri., Apr. 5, 3:00pm (Stauffer-Flint 100):
Frances Ingemann Lecture: Andries Coetzee, Ph.D. (Dept. of Linguistics, University of Michigan)
 
Thurs., Apr. 18, 4:00pm (Blake 206):
Linguistics Colloquy: Heather Fielding (Child Language Doctoral Program, KU)
 
Thurs., May 2, 4:00pm (Blake 206):
Linguistics Undergraduate/Graduate Awards & Reception

Thurs., May 9, 4:00pm (Blake 206):
Linguistics Undergraduate Honors/Research Experience Program Project Presentations
 

Recent Publications

  • Chien, Y.-F., Sereno, J., & Zhang, J. (in press). What's in a word: Observing the contribution of underlying and surface representations. Language and Speech.More»
  • Chu, C.-Y., & Minai, U. (2018). Children's demonstrative comprehension and the role of non-linguistic cognitive abilities: a cross-linguistic study. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. More»
  • Covey, L., Gabriele, A., & Fiorentino, R. (2018). Can learners use morphosyntactic cues to facilitate processing? Evidence from a study of gender agreement in Hindi. Language Acquisition. More» 
  • Fiorentino, R., Covey, L., & Gabriele, A. (2018). Individual differences in the processing of referential dependencies in English. Neuroscience Letters. More»
  • Gabriele, A., Fiorentino, R., & Covey, L. 2017). Understanding the symptoms and sources of variability in second language sentence processing. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 20(4), 685-686. More»
  • Jongman, A., & McMurray, B. (2017). On invariance: Acoustic input meets listener expectations. In A. Lahiri & S. Kotzor (Eds.), The Speech Processing Lexicon: Neurocognitive and behavioural approaches. Germany: Mouton DeGruyter.More»
  • Krueger, B., Storkel, H., & Minai, U. (2018). The influence of misarticulations on children's word identification and processing. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. More»
More Publications
  • Li, M., & Zhang, J. (in press). Perceptual distinctiveness between dental and palatal sibilants in different vowel contexts and its implication for phonological contrasts. Laboratory Phonology. More»  
  • Liu, J., & Zhang, J. (in press). A production and perception study on tonal neutralization in Nanchang Chinese. Journal of Chinese Linguistics monograph series no. 25: Studies on tonal aspects of languages. More»
  • McKenzie, A. Eziz, G. & Major. T. (2018)  Latent homomorphism and content satisfaction: The double life of Turkic auxiliary-(İ)p bol-’, with Gülnar Eziz and Travis Major. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3(1), 47. More»
  • Minai, U. (2017). Yooji-no imikaishaku-wa naze otona-no sore-to-wa kotonarunoka. [Why children's meaning comprehension differs from adults' meaning comprehension]. In K.-I Takami & I. Gyoda (Eds.), Hushigi-ni michi-ta kotoba-no sekai. [The world of language, full of wonder]. (pp. 68-71). Tokyo, Japan: Kaitakusha Publishing Company. More»
  • Minai, U., & Nadtochiy, N. (2017). Native and non-native comprehension of the Japanese existential quantifier nanko-ka. In M. Nakayama & Y.-C. Su, Language Acquisition and Language Disorders series. Studies in Chinese and Japanese Language Acquisition (pp. 197- 219). John Benjamins. More»
  • Minai, U., Gustafson, K., Fiorentino, R., Jongman, A., & Sereno, J. (2017). Fetal rhythm-based language discrimination: A biomagnetometry study. NeuroReport, 28(10), 561-564. More»
  • Peter, L., Hirata-Edds, T., Feeling, D., Kirk, Wyman, Mackey, R., & Duncan, P. T. (2017). The Cherokee Nation immersion school as a translanguaging space. Journal of American Indian Education, 56(1), 5-31​.More»
  • Politzer-Ahles, S., & Zhang, J. (in press). Evidence for the role of tone sandhi in Mandarin speech production. Journal of Chinese Linguistics monograph series no. 25: Studies on tonal aspects of languages.More»
  • Pye, C. & Pfeiler, B. (2017). A comparative study of the acquisition of nominative and ergative agreement in European and Mayan languages. In Diane Massam, Lisa Travis and Jessica Coon (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Ergativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.More»
  • Pye, C. (in press). The Comparative Method of Language Acquisition Research, University of Chicago Press.More»
  • Pye, C., Pfeiler, B., & Mateo, P. (2017). The acquisition of negation in three Mayan languages. Estudios de Cultura Maya 49, 227-246.More»
  • Pye, C., Pfeiler, B., & Mateo, P. (2017). The acquisition of Mayan languages. In Nora England, Judith Aissen and Roberto Zavala (Eds.), Handbook of Mayan Languages, 19-42, London, Routledge. More»
  • Qin, Z., Chien, Y.F., & Tremblay, A. (2017). Processing of word-level stress by Mandarin-Speaking second-language learners of English. Applied Psycholinguistics, 38(3), 541-570. More»
  • Sereno, J. (in press). How category learning occurs in adults and children. In A. Lahiri & S. Kotzor, The Speech Processing Lexicon: Neurocognitive and behavioural approaches. De Gruyter Mouton. More»
  • Tremblay, A., Broersma, M., & Coughlin, C. E. (in press). The functional weight of a prosodic cue in the native language predicts speech segmentation in a second language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. More» 
  • Tremblay, A., & Coughlin, C. E. (2017). Cue-weighting mechanism and bilingualism. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 20(4), 708-709. More»
  • Tremblay, A., Namjoshi, J., Spinelli, E., Broersma, M., Cho, T., Kim, S., Martínez-García, M. T., & Connell, K. (2017). “Experience with a second language affects the use of fundamental frequency in speech segmentation.” PLOS One. More»
  • Wang, Y., Jongman, A., & Sereno, J. A. (in press). L2 Acquisition of Chinese Tone. In R. Sybesma, W. Behr, Y. Gu, Z. Handel, C.-T. Huang, & J. Meyers, Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics (ECLL). Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics. Brill Publishers. More»
  • Yang, X., Minai, U., & Fiorentino, R. (2018). Context-sensitivity and Individual Differences in the Derivation of Scalar Implicature. Frontiers in Psychology, 9:1720. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01720.
  • Zhang, J. (2017). Review of The phonology of Standard Chinese, 2nd edition, by San Duanmu, Oxford University Press, 2007 Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 47(1). More»

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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>>
More Presentations
  • 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 40th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Boston, MA. More>>
  • Covey, L., Gabriele, A., & Fiorentino, R. (2017). Tracking the dynamics of wh- dependency resolution inside and outside of islands: An ERP investigation. Poster presented at 9th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language. Baltimore, MD. More>>
  • Doherty, J-P. (2017). Pieces of the Periphery. Kansas Linguistics Colloquy Series: Lawrence, KS. More>>
  • Duncan, P. T. (2017). When a language is consistently ergative (& how it gets that way). Department of Linguistics Colloquy. Lawrence, KS. More>>
  • Duncan, P. T., & Torrence, H. (2017). Verbal complementizers and the Indirect Agree relation in Ibibio. 91st Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. Austin, TX. More>>
  • Feroce, N., Covey, L., Fiorentino, R., & Gabriele, A. (2017). Examining individual differences in the processing of referential dependencies in Spanish: An ERP investigation. Poster presented at 9th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language. Baltimore, MD. More>>
  • Gabriele, A., Covey, L., Feroce, N., & Fiorentino, R. (2017). Individual differences in the processing of pronominal ambiguity in English and Spanish: An ERP investigation. Poster presented at Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics. Georgetown University. More>>
  • Kummer, D. (2017). A ton of planks in plankton: Examining morpho-orthographic decomposition in the early stages of complex word processing. Poster presented at KU Graduate Research Competition: Lawrence, KS. More>>
  • Kummer, D. (2017). Developing constructed language morphology. Guest lecture presented at Wichita State University: Wichita, KS. More>>
  • Li, M. (2017). Sibilant place contrast: Perception, production, typology, and sound change. Spring 2017 Kansas Linguistics Colloquy Series: Lawrence, KS. More>>
  • Li, M., & Zhang, J. (2017). The neutralization of dental and palatal sibilants: a sound change in progress in Xiangtan Chinese. Poster presented at The 91st Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America: Austin, TX. More>>
  • Nakata, K. (2017). Explicit learning of Japanese mimetics using voicing, gemination, and reduplication rules. Presentation at the 2017 Annual Spring Conference of American Association of Japanese Teacher (AATJ): Toronto, Canada. More>>
  • Qin, Z. (2017). How native listeners and adult second-language learners of Chinese process tones in recognition of Chinese spoken words: an eye-tracking study. Department of Linguistics Colloquy and Child Language Proseminar: Lawrence KS. More>>
  • Redmon, C., Jongman, A., & Zhang, J. (2017). Distributional factors in Telugu sibilant production. Poster presented at the 174th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America: New Orleans, LA. More>>
  • Redmon, C., & Sangma, T. (2018). On the importance of machine-readable lexicons in the study of South Asian phonologies: Demonstrations from a 16,000-word database of Garo. Paper presented at Formal Approaches to South Asian Languages 8: Wichita, KS. More>>
  • Sereno, J. A. (2017). Vibrations to representations: Issues in speech processing. Invited talk at the 42nd Annual Interdisciplinary Conference (AIC), Sereno Symposium, Breckenridge, Colorado. More>>
  • Tremblay, A. (forthcoming, May 2018). The functional weight of suprasegmental cues in the native language predicts spoken word recognition in a second language. Plenary lecture given at the Hanyang International Symposium on Phonetics and Cogntive Sciences of Language 2018. Hanyang University. South Korea. More>>
  • Tremblay, A. (2017). Learning to use intonational cues in the segmentation of French speech. Conference of the Société dos études supérieures du Département d'Etudes francaises. University of Toronto. More>>
  • Yang, X., Fiorentino, R., & Minai, U. (2017). Context-dependent Meaning Computation: The Role of Question Under Discussion and Individual Differences in Scalar Implicature. Invited presentation at the Child Language Proseminar. Lawrence, KS. More>>
  • Yang, X., Fiorentino, R., & Minai, U. (2017). The role of individual differences in the context-dependent interpretation of ’some’. Poster presented at the 30th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing. Cambridge, MA. More>>
  • Yang, J. H., Kim, J. A., Lee, J. M., & Kim, J. H. (2017). The effects of script difference on L2 lexical processing of Korean-English bilinguals. Presentation given at the 25th Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference. Honolulu, HI. More>>
  • Zhang, Y., Leung, K., Wang, Y., Jongman, A., & Sereno, J. A. (2017). Audio-visual perception of Mandarin tone in clear speech. 174th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), New Orleans, Louisiana. More>>
     

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