Resume

• 2004

  Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

  Linguistics and Cognitive Science

  University of Delaware

  Laboratory Phonetics

  Acoustic and Physiological Phonetics

  Language and Gender

  Culture and Pedagogy

  Sociolinguistics

  Phonology

  Acoustic Phonetics

  The Study of Language

  First Language Development

  Psycholinguistics

  Applied Linguistics

  Experimental Phonology

  Language

  Mind

  Society

  Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar

  The Phonetics-Phonology Interface

  ESL - Advanced Composition

  Introduction to General Linguistics

  Duolingo German Fluency: Intermediate (Estimated)

  Duolingo

  Duolingo German Fluency: Intermediate (Estimated)

  Duolingo

• 2002

  Spanish

  English

  Romanian

  French

  The George Washington University

  Master of Arts (M.A.)

  Linguistics

  Stony Brook University

• 1996

  Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)

  English Language and Literature/Letters; Spanish Language and Literature

  University of Bucharest

• Weekly visits and activities with Alzheimer's patients.

  New Horizons Tower

  Adoption Team

  Second Chance Rescue NYC

  Phonology

  Editing

  Experimental Research

  Statistics

  Psychology

  Cognitive Science

  Grant Writing

  Acoustic Analysis

  Psycholinguistics

  Praat

  Higher Education

  Research

  Audacity

  Second Language Acquisition

  Speech Perception

  Bilingualism

  Phonetics

  Mentoring

  Teaching

  Foreign Languages

  The bilingual advantage in phonetic and phonological acquisition: a study of the initial learning of word-final coronal stop realization in a novel accent of English

  Renata Lohmann

  Research question: We address the question of whether the cognitive advantage of the bilingual mind

  already demonstrated in the case of auditory processing or novel word acquisition

  also applies to other linguistic domains

  specifically to phonetic and phonological learning. \n\nDesign: We compare the performance of 17 monolinguals and 25 bilinguals from Canada in a production experiment with two tasks: imitation and spontaneous reproduction of a novel foreign accent

  specifically Sussex English.\n\nData and analysis: To eliminate potential sources of variability

  our focus is on a sound already existing in the subjects’ production (the glottal stop)

  but differently mapped to surface representations in the novel accent to which they were exposed (i.e. as an allophone of coronal stops in word-final position). We measured the glottal stop rates of our subjects in baseline

  training

  and post-training. \n\nResults: The two groups behaved differently

  with bilinguals showing a larger increase of their glottal stop rate post-training. Our results are thus consistent with a bilingual advantage in phonetic and phonological learning.\n\nOriginality: We interpret these findings in light of recent psycholinguistic work and conclude that echoic memory strategies

  possibly underlain by stronger subcortical encoding of sound in bilinguals

  may account for our results by facilitating the re-mapping between existing mental representations of sounds and existing articulatory command configurations. \n\nSignificance: Our study adds to the body of work suggesting that there may be an advantage of bilingualism in second dialect learning in adulthood

  and provides an explanation in terms of perceptual strategies in which echoic memory is involved. We also contribute to the recent body of research suggesting that imitation of an action can result in improved understanding of that action. \n

  The bilingual advantage in phonetic and phonological acquisition: a study of the initial learning of word-final coronal stop realization in a novel accent of English

  This paper presents the results of an acoustic study of fricatives from four places of articulation produced by 31 native speakers of Romanian

  as well as those of a perceptual study using the stimuli from the acoustic experiment

  allowing for a direct comparison between acoustic properties and perception. It was found that there are greater acoustic differences between plain and palatalized labials and dorsals as compared to coronals. The acoustic results were paralleled by the perceptual findings. This pattern departs from cross-linguistic generalizations made with respect to the properties of secondary palatalization. A likely source of the differences is the fact that previous studies of secondary palatalization typically involved stops which tend to exhibit various enhancement phenomena at the coronal place of articulation. Since the enhancement generally involves additional frication

  this is not a useful strategy for fricatives at the coronal

  or any other place of articulation. These findings form the basis of a discussion highlighting the differences between enhanced and non-enhanced secondary palatalization.

  Palatalization in Romanian—Acoustic properties and perception

  In this study

  we compare monolinguals and bilinguals in a production experiment with two tasks: imitation and spontaneous reproduction of a novel foreign accent. We focus on sounds already existing in subjects' inventories

  but differently mapped to underlying representations. Specifically

  we examine the acquisition of the neutralization patterns in two tense-lax vowel pairs (beat-bit

  bait-bet) in Russian-accented English. While both monolinguals and bilinguals performed similarly in imitation

  bilinguals outperformed monolinguals in spontaneous reproduction. We conclude that this is likely due to more efficient coupling of sensory and cognitive functions

  and suggest that echoic memory may play an important role by facilitating the re-mapping between existing mental representations of sounds and existing articulatory command configurations

  an idea which may also be supported by independent findings of stronger subcortical encoding of sound by the bilingual brain (Krizman et al. 2012).

  Being \"better\" with accents: evidence from bilinguals

  The Unit of Speech Encoding: The Case of Romanian

  In preparing to produce speech

  the number of units in an utterance determines how much time speakers require to plan and begin their production (Sternberg et al. 1978

  1980). Previous research proposed that the crucial units are prosodic (i.e.

  Phonological Word)

  not syntactic or morphological (Levelt 1989). Subsequent experimental studies of Dutch using a pre- pared speech paradigm claim to support this view (Wheel- don and Lahiri 1997

  2002)

  but in these studies the behavior of compounds did not conform to predictions and required the introduction of a different way of counting units. Since two Phonological Words patterned with one Phonological Word + clitics

  and not with a phrase containing two Phonological Words

  a recursive Phonological Word (PW’) was invoked. Similar results emerged with compounds in Italian in a subsequent experiment conducted with the same methodology (Vogel and Wheeldon 2010). It was thus proposed that the relevant unit for speech encoding is not the Phonological Word

  but rather the Composite Group

  a constituent of the Prosodic Hierarchy (Nespor and Vogel 1986) between the Phonological Word and Phonological Phrase that comprises both compounds and clitic constructions (e.g. Vogel 2009). We further probe the question of the relevant unit for speech encoding using the same methodology in another language

  Romanian. Similar findings support the proposal that the speech planning unit is the Composite Group since

  again

  compounds with two Phonological Words pattern with single words and clitic constructions

  not Phonological Phrases which also contain two Phonological Words.

  The Unit of Speech Encoding: The Case of Romanian

  In this paper we explore two methods for the classification of fricatives. First

  for the coding of the speech

  we compared two sets of acoustic measures obtained from a corpus of Romanian fricatives: (a) spectral moments and (b) cepstral coefficients. Second

  we compared two methods of determining the regions of the segments from which the measures would be extracted. In the first method

  the phonetic segments were divided into three regions of approximately equal duration. In the second method

  Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) were used to divide each segment into three regions such that the variances of the measures within each region were minimized. The corpus we analyzed consists of 3674 plain and palatalized word-final fricatives from four places of articulation

  produced by 31 native speakers of Romanian (20 females). We used logistic regression to classify fricatives by place

  voicing

  palatalization status

  and gender. We found that cepstral coefficients reliably outperformed spectral moments in all classification tasks

  and that using regions determined by HMM yielded slightly higher correct classification rates than using regions of equal duration.

  A comparison of cepstral coefficients and spectral moments in the classification of Romanian fricatives

  This study examines a rare cross-linguistic contrast

  that between plain and secondarily palatalized postalveolar fricatives

  through (i) an acoustic analysis of the production of 31 Romanian speakers

  and (ii) a perception experiment with a different group of 31 native speakers. Evidence of acoustic separation between plain and palatalized forms was found for 27 of the subjects

  suggesting that the contrast is produced by the majority. This is consistent with previous reports of native speakers collected in 1961. These findings were supported by the results of the perceptual experiment

  which showed that native speakers exhibit moderate sensitivity to this contrast. An examination of each of the two genders' production separately suggests that a process of neutralization may be in progress

  more strongly realized by males compared to females. Aside from documenting this phenomenon in Romanian

  an explanation is sought for its longevity

  and it is proposed that grammatical restructuring offers the best account for the observed facts.

  Investigating the status of a rare cross-linguistic contrast: The case of Romanian palatalized postalveolars

  Laura

  Spinu

  Brock University

  Wilfrid Laurier University

  Concordia University

  City University of New York

  University of Toronto

  York University

  Western University

  University of Delaware

  iLanguage Lab Ltd

  St. Catharines

  Course Instructor

  Brock University

  Toronto

  Canada Area

  Lecturer (part-time)

  University of Toronto

  Waterloo

  ON

  Department of Psychology

  Part-time Assistant Professor

  Wilfrid Laurier University

  Assistant Professor

  Montreal

  Canada Area

  Concordia University

  Brooklyn

  NY

  Assistant Professor

  City University of New York

  Western University

  York University

  Course Instructor

  Toronto

  Canada Area

  Phonetician

  Montreal

  Canada Area

  iLanguage Lab Ltd

  Newark

  DE

  Assistant Professor

  University of Delaware

  Phonetician

  iLanguage Lab Ltd