PhonX

Spring 2026 Meetings:

every other Wednesday, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm (please find the venue below)

• Jan 21: Organisational Meeting (joint with Mathling)
  • Venue: Room 108, Linguistics Building (18 Seminary Pl)
• Jan 28: Reduplicative Opacity in Malay Revisited
  • Discussion Leader: Utku
  • Readings: Siah, J., Zukoff, S. & Hsieh, F., (2025) “Reduplicative Opacity in Malay Revisited: Preliminary Phonetic Evidence for Variable “Recopying” and BRCT”, Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology 1(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.7275/amphonology.3016
  • Venue: Room 108, Linguistics Building (18 Seminary Pl)
• Feb 11: The Inadequacy of the Consonantal Root
  • Discussion Leader: Zach
  • Readings: Ussishkin, A. (1999). The inadequacy of the consonantal root: Modern Hebrew denominal verbs and output–output correspondence. Phonology, 16(3), 401-442
  • Venue: ABW-6190, Academic Building (15 Seminary Pl)
• Feb 25: Model Theory and the Content of OT Constraints
  • Discussion Leader: Eli Franz
  • Readings: Potts, C., & Pullum, G. K. (2002). Model theory and the content of OT constraints. Phonology, 19(3), 361-393.
  • Venue: ABW-5050, Academic Building (15 Seminary Pl)
• Mar 11: The Life Cycle of Phonological Processes: Accounting for Dialectal Microtypologies
  • Discussion Leader: Zoe
  • Readings: Ramsammy, M. (2015). The life cycle of phonological processes: Accounting for dialectal microtypologies. Language and Linguistics Compass, 9(1), 33-54.
  • Venue: ABW-5050, Academic Building (15 Seminary Pl)
• Mar 25: Invited Talk
  • Speaker: Prof. Brett Hyde
  • Title: Noise and Timing
  • Abstract: In this talk, I will revisit some of the key foundational concepts of metrical stress theory (Liberman 1975, Liberman and Prince 1977). I will argue for a distinction between phenomenal prominence (stress and accent) and metrical prominence (temporal prominence) with the primary purpose of phenomenal prominence being to indicate the positions of metrical prominence (and, therefore, overall metrical organization). I will draw on the theoretical and empirical literature on musical rhythm to support the distinction. In fleshing out the distinction, I will make several key claims about the nature and purpose of the two types of prominence. I will argue, for example, that the list of phenomena that might constitute stress or accent must go beyond the usual suspects—pitch, length, and loudness—to include phenomena like timbre (quality), voicing, and aspiration.  I will also argue that metrical patterns are always richly structured and that minimal phenomenal cues are necessary to indicate a particular rich metrical organization. One of the key consequences that this view has for our picture of the empirical terrain is that there are no single or dual prominence systems from a metrical perspective.
  • Venue: ABW-6190, Academic Building (15 Seminary Pl)
• Apr 08: Practice Talks for Tu+11
  • Presenters: Adam M., Utku, Zoe, Colin & Merlin
  • Titles (abstracts attached)
    1. Not All Round Vowels are Created Equal: Trigger Asymmetries in Kazakh Rounding Harmony (oral)
    2. Perceptual Weakness in Backness Harmony: Applying Insights from Rounding Harmony (poster)
  • Venue: ABW-5050, Academic Building (15 Seminary Pl)
• Apr 22: Practice Talks for PhPhone
  • Presenters: Marjorie
  • Titles: How is Dominance Reversal Possible? An Investigation into OT Constraint Interactions
  • Venue: ABW-5050, Academic Building (15 Seminary Pl)

Fall 2025 Meetings:

every other Tuesday, 11:30 am – 12:30 pm

Location: Room 108, 18 Seminary Pl

• Sept 05: Organisational Meeting (joint with Mathling)
• Sept 16: Codas are Universally Moraic
  • Discussion Leader: Utku Zobarlar
  • Readings: Paramore, J. C. (2025). Codas are universally moraic. Phonology, 42, e1. doi:10.1017/S0952675724000204
• Sept 30: A formal typology of process interactions
  • Discussion Leader: Chenli Wang
  • Readings: Baković, E., & Blumenfeld, L. (2024). A formal typology of process interactions. Phonological Data and Analysis, 6(3), 1-43.
• Oct 14: Weak determinism and the computational consequences of interaction
  • Discussion Leader: Marjorie Leduc
  • Readings: Meinhardt, E., Mai, A., Baković, E., & McCollum, A. (2024). Weak determinism and the computational consequences of interaction. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 42(3), 1191-1232.
• Oct 28: The Problem of the Abstractness of Underlying Representations
  • Discussion Leader: Merlin Balihaxi
  • Readings: Kenstowicz, M., Kissbert, C. (1977). 1 – The Problem of the Abstractness of Underlying Representations. In Topics in Phonological Theory (pp. 1–62). Elsevier Inc. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-405150-8.50005-X
• Nov 11: Phonetics and phonology of soft ‘g’ in Turkish
  • Discussion Leader: Utku Zobarlar
  • Readings: Ünal-Logacev, Ö., Żygis, M., & Fuchs, S. (2019). Phonetics and phonology of soft ‘g’ in Turkish. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 49(2), 183–206. doi:10.1017/S0025100317000317
• Nov 25: Thanksgiving week off
• Dec 09: Practice Talk for Old-World Conference in Phonology (OCP23)
  • Talk by: Chenli Wang
  • Title: Learning and Representing Process Interaction Through Simplex ISL Transducers

Spring 2025 Meetings:

Wednesday 11 am – 12 pm

Location: Room 403, 1 Spring Street

• Jan 22: MathLing/PhonX Organisational Meeting
• Feb 19:
  • Practice talk for Tu+10 (Merlin Balkhash)
  • AMP 2024 proceedings organisations
• April 02: Practice talk for FASAL (Krishna Pulipaty)

 

Fall 2024 Meetings:

Monday 9 am – 10 am

Location: Room 319, 1 Spring Street

• Sept 09: MathLing/PhonX Organisational Meeting
• Sept 16: AMP 2024 Organising Session
• Sept 30: AMP 2024 Organising Session
• Oct 14: AMP 2024 Practice talk
• Oct 30: Last AMP 2024 Organising Session
• Nov 01- Nov 03: Annual Meeting on Phonology (Academic Building)
• Nov 18: Gérard Avelino’s Practice Talk on Leti metathesis, see abstract below:

This paper demonstrates how Boolean monadic recursive schemes (BMRS), a computational method of modeling phonological processes (as proposed in Chandlee & Jardine 2021, characterized in Bhaskar et al. 2020), can model metathesis in Leti, a Timoric language spoken primarily on the island of Leti in the Maluku archipelago. In this language, metathesis—when two segments switch linear position—is morphologically productive and phonologically conditioned. Using data and analyses by Hume (1998) as a starting point, I build on the idea that metathesis is a process that simultaneously deletes a segment and inserts it in a new place, modeling this process using BMRS. In the case of Leti, in certain environments, a word-edge consonant deletes and inserts itself right before its preceding vowel. In contrast with Hume’s optimality and correspondence theory-based analysis, however, BMRS can intuitively account for the environments and opaque phonological interactions driving Leti metathesis without having to appeal to linearity constraints and syllable-level representations, showing that Leti metathesis is a local process that applies to segments.

Spring 2024 Meetings:

Wednesday 10 am – 11 am

Location: Room 108, Linguistics building (18 Seminary Place)

• Jan 24: AMP 2024 Organising Session
• Feb 07: Perception of Vowel Devoicing in Central Mexican Spanish – Justin Bland
• Feb 21: AMP 2024 Organising Session
• March 6: Linguistics Graduate Open House (no meeting)
• March 20: Tu+9 Abstract Sharing – Utku Zobarlar and Aidan Sharma
• April 3: AMP 2024 Organising Session
• April 17: AMP 2024 Organising Session

 

Fall 2023 Meetings:

Wednesday 10 am – 11 am

Location: Room 108, Linguistics building (18 Seminary Place)

• Sept 6: Organizational meeting with MathLing
• Sept 13: Lionnet (2023) – Marjorie Leduc
• Sept 29: Invited speaker – Lisa Davidson (NYU): Room 403 at 1 Spring Street
• Oct 25: Ryan (2023) – Hyunjung Joo
• Nov 4: Invited speaker – Kyle Gorman (CUNY): Room 403 at 1 Spring Street
• Dec 29: Revisiting Leti metathesis with Boolean monadic recursive schemes – Gérard Avelino

Spring 2023 Meetings:

Friday 11 am – 12 pm

Location: 1 Spring Street

• Feb 8: Invited speaker, Shu-hao Shih

 

Fall 2022 Meetings:

Friday 11 am – 12 pm

Location: 1 Spring Street

• Sept 9: First meeting
• Oct 7: AMP practice talk (Huteng & Marjorie)
• Oct 28: Post AMP meeting
• Nov 4: Invited speaker, Katie Franich (Harvard)

Spring 2022 Meetings:

Professor Akinbiyi Akinlabi’s tone seminar

• 1st session: 12:30pm, Feb 11 – Hyman and Leben (2017)
• 2nd session: Feb 25
• 3rd session: March 11

 

Fall 2021 Meetings:

After a hiatus during the 2020 pandemic, PhonX is back this semester with hybrid meetings.

Friday 11:00am – 12:00am
Location: Room 108 + Zoom meeting

• Sept. 24 (AMP 2021 practice presentations):
  1. Nate Koser: “Foot structure enables strict locality in phonological processes“;
  2. Huteng Dai: “Learning Phonotactics in a Differentiable Framework of Subregular Languages“;
• Oct. 8 (Paper discussion)
  • Topic: “Formal Properties of Metrical Structure” by Marc van Oostendorp
• Oct. 22 (NELS 2021 practice presentations)
  1. Nate Koser and Adam McCollum: “Computation of unbounded processes with a suprabinary scale requires non-determinism”;
  2. Tajudeen Mamadou and Adam Jardine: “A Deterministic, Local Hypothesis for Tonal Processes“.
• Nov. 19 (Talk + Paper discussion)
  • Topic: Tone-Intonation interface
  • Hyunjung Joo “Tonal alignment with articulatory gestures in South Kyungsang Korean.”
• Dec. 3 (Papar discussion):
  • Topic: Tone-Intonation interface
  • Tajudeen Mamadou:
    • Kugler (2018) “Tone and intonation in Akan”
    • Xu (2019) “Prosody, Tone, Intonation“

Spring 2020 Meetings:

Friday 10:00am – 11:50am
Location: Room 108

• Jan. 24 (WCCFL 2020 practice talk):
  • Topic: “Gradient similarity in Lezgian laryngeal harmony”
  • Speaker: Huteng Dai

• March 27: (email organizers for the link to our online meeting)
  • Topic: Output-driven Phonology (mini-course series I)
  • Speaker: Bruce Tesar
  • Reading: Tesar, B. (2017). Phonological learning with output-driven maps. Language Acquisition, 24(2), 148-167.

• April 3:
  • Topic: Output-driven Phonology (mini-course series II)
  • Speaker: Bruce Tesar

• April 10:
  • Topic: Output-driven Phonology (mini-course series III)
  • Speaker: Bruce Tesar

 

Fall 2019 Meetings:

• Sept. 6 (First meeting) 10:00am – 11:00am:
  • Introductions and icebreaker; 
  • The housing and traveling plan of AMP;
  • 5-minutes flash talks about your current research.

• Sept. 13:
  • Topic: “Ad Hoc Phonetic Categorization and Prediction”
  • Speaker: Ryan Rhodes (RuCCs)
  • Slides: [Link]

• Oct. 4 (AMP practice presentation): 

1. 1. Adam McCollum: Sonority-driven stress and vowel reduction in Uyghur
   2. Adam Jardine and Nate Koser: Stress assignment and subsequentiality 

• Oct. 18:
  • Topic: Unifying Prosodic and Segmental Repair: Metathesis and Epenthesis in Uab Meto 
  • Speaker: Kate Mooney (NYU)
  • Abstract: This paper examines a pattern of metathesis in Uab Meto (Austronesian; Timor, Indonesia), where metathesis is a) synchronically productive, and b) conditioned by phonotactics and sentence prosody requirements. I propose that the order of consonants and vowels is phonologically determined, and so surface alternations in linear order are fully predictable based on variation in the phonotactic environment, such as affixation or prosodic vowel lengthening. This bears on the longstanding debate on the status of metathesis: whether it exists at all synchronically, given its typological rarity (Webb 1974; Hume 1998; a.o.) or if it is not a primitive operation (Takahashi 2018).

• Nov. 15:
  • Topic: Vowel hiatus resolution and domain-sensitivity in Ikpana
  • Speaker: Bertille Baron (Georgetown)
  • Abstract: Vowel hiatus resolution at word boundaries in Ikpana ([lgq], Kwa, Niger-Congo) is a domain- sensitive phenomenon. At certain word boundaries, vowel hiatus is frequently dispreferred, and vowel reduction is used as a repair strategy. At other word boundaries, vowel hiatus most commonly surfaces as such. This non-categorical alternation between a faithful output and vowel reduction is determined by both the syntactic environment and the syntactic construction in which the underlying hiatus occurs, suggesting the need for the phonological module of grammar to reference syntactic structure, either directly or indirectly. In a Match Theory-based account (Selkirk 2011), this presentation models the empirical facts and accounts for both the resolution strategies and the amount of variation attested in the data.