Association for Laboratory Phonology

How well do traditional theories of #prosody capture the way people actually talk? New work argues that #prosody reflects grammatical structure alongside the real-time demands of unrehearsed speaking, including planning, memory, and breathing. #LabPhon #openaccess #syntax doi.org/10.16995/lab...

When speakers shadow a #vowel from another known #dialect, do they limit their #convergence to the sound they practice, or extend their imitation to other sounds too? Wider effects were possible in a study of #NewZealandEnglish speakers! #LabPhon #openaccess www.journal-labphon.org/article/id/1...

Are morphologically complex words stored in the mind as whole units, or generated as needed? Results from #Wubuy are consistent with #dual-route accounts: most forms appear generated through rule application, but others may be listed. #LabPhon #openaccess @bjbaker.bsky.social doi.org/10.16995/lab...

How do speakers control their vocal tracts to produce consonant length contrasts, as in #Japanese "shiny" (pikapika) vs. "VERY shiny" (pik:apika)? @fburroni.bsky.social et al. use articulography to find and model differences in gestural extent and timing. doi.org/10.16995/lab... #openaccess #LabPhon

People tend to sound a little like someone they just heard talking. How good are they at controlling this phonetic imitation? Is it easier for some features than others? @kathrynck.bsky.social, @ohiostateling.bsky.social compare #convergence across tasks: doi.org/10.16995/lab... #LabPhon #openaccess

When a phonological contrast is undergoing #merger, can visible articulatory cues co-vary with acoustic cues to enhance the contrast and shape the direction of #soundchange? @baichendu.bsky.social and @ampfiffner.bsky.social analyze #Mandarin #sibilants: doi.org/10.16995/lab... #LabPhon #openaccess

Do children differ in how they acquire prosodic focus marking? Findings from #Dutch indicate consistent individual differences across age and focus conditions, plus links between prosodic focus marking, #vocabulary, and #musicality in specific structures. #LabPhon #openaccess doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Are cognitive styles a source of variation in #prosody perception by neurotypical listeners? A measure of #TheoryOfMind can predict English-speaking listeners' attention to phonetic variation, & their influence by lexical frequency, in prosody judgments. #openaccess #LabPhon doi.org/10.16995/lab...

There's more to the realization of two-series #voicing contrasts than just #VOT. Results from #Polish reveal that voiceless consonants show active phonetic effects on a following vowel, which are interpreted via current models of #laryngeal #phonology. doi.org/10.16995/lab... #LabPhon #openaccess

Are te reo #Māori opening vowel sequences really produced like hiatuses? Acoustic data from 3 generations of Māori speakers reveal a continuum of hiatus-like to diphthongal realizations, affected by morpheme boundaries & word position, w/change over time. #LabPhon #openaccess doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Vowels are longer before voiced consonants than before voiceless consonants. How does the size of this effect vary by language? Learn about its patterns of gradient cross-linguistic variation, in a new meta-analysis. doi.org/10.16995/lab... #LabPhon #typology #openaccess

When adult bilinguals learn new sound contrasts in an L2, how does their L1 influence what they hear and process? Results from Mandarin-English bilinguals suggest L1 phonology influences phono-lexical representations more strongly than phonetic perception doi.org/10.16995/lab... #LabPhon #openaccess

Prof. Bob McMurray delivers the sixth and final invited talk of #LabPhon20: “The dynamic, gradient, idiosyncratic and messy and (in)consistent nature of speech categorization”

Why are there so many cues to #focus across languages, and how do listeners make sense of them? Focus can be viewed as an attentional tool, linked to prominence, whose cues differ between languages, speakers and by the discourse context. www.journal-labphon.org/article/id/1... #openaccess #LabPhon

“Rethinking the source-filter theory” by Susanne Fuchs (June ’26) labphon.org/labphon20/home #LabPhon20

Kudos to @ucalgaryling.bsky.social PhD candidate Vincent Nwosu and his co-supervisor @harvard.edu prof. Katie Franich @kfran.bsky.social on organizing the satellite workshop “Pitch at the Crossroads: Experimental Approaches to the Language–Music Connection” at #LabPhon20 labphon.org/labphon20/pi...

“Co-speech gesture as evidence for prosodic planning and as a resource for fieldworkers,” invited talk by @harvard.edu prof. Katie Franich (@kfran.bsky.social) at labphon.org/labphon20/home #LabPhon20 ‎ Read Franich & Nwosu (2026) in the latest issue of @labphon.bsky.social — link below!

Prof. Naomi Feldman delivers the fifth invited talk at #LabPhon20: “Beyond long-term statistics: A mismatch in feature weighting between models and humans” 🐦🐦 @labphon.bsky.social

Someone suggested today at @labphon.bsky.social that academic posters need a QR code going to an email signup for "please send me the official version of this paper once it's done and citable" And all I could say was YES PLEASE CAN I HELP TWEET THIS INTO EXISTENCE

Prof. Kathryn Franich @kfran.bsky.social delivers the fourth invited talk at #LabPhon20: “Co-Speech Gesture as Evidence for Prosodic Planning and as a Resource for Fieldworkers” 🐦🐦 @labphon.bsky.social

“The role of dialect variation in Scottish and American English speakers’ production and perception of non-native /y-u/ contrast” by Jonathan Havenhill, Jane Stuart-Smith and Madeleine Oakley (June ’26) labphon.org/labphon20/home @labphon.bsky.social V. interesting thru redeployment lens #LabPhon20

Cool: “The functional status of f0 shapes the neural encoding of English stop voicing contrasts: Evidence from Korean and English listeners” by Chao Han, Yoonjung Kang, Juhyung Cho, Tae-Won Lim, Say Young Kim and Philip J. Monahan (June ’26) labphon.org/labphon20/home @labphon.bsky.social #LabPhon20

“God be with ye, frequency effects: A 1,000 years of reductive sound change in English” by Márton Sóskuthy (June ’26) labphon.org/labphon20/home @labphon.bsky.social #LabPhon20 ‎‎ (Good) bye < ... < God be with ye ‎‎ Data and code: osf.io/nw87j/overvi...

Prof. Mark Amengual delivers the third invited talk at #LabPhon20: “Cue weighting and the acoustic realization of stress in Heritage Tagalog (and how it relates to bilingual co-activation)” 🐦🐦 @labphon.bsky.social

Prof. Susanne Fuchs delivers the second invited talk at #LabPhon20: “Rethinking the source-filter theory” 🐦🐦 @labphon.bsky.social

“Does opacity allow recoverability? A processing view of Canadian Raising” by Ashley Farris-Trimble, Anne-Michelle Tessier and Danica Reid (June ’26) labphon.org/labphon20/home @labphon.bsky.social Cool study/results. Betteridge’s law holds for nonce words. #LabPhon20

“Using PCA to examine cue variation in stress production: a case study of te reo Māori” by Kirsten Culhane, Forrest Panther and Jennifer Ha (June ’26) labphon.org/labphon20/home @labphon.bsky.social “This study represents the first significant study of stress production in Māori.” #LabPhon20

PhD students @jupitararay.bsky.social & Meixian Li will both give posters at #LabPhon20 🇨🇦! 🤩 - "Perception and production change out of sync" (Ray, @cbchang.bsky.social) - "Cross-language variation in sociophonetic perception reflects language effects" (Li, Yao, Chang) 🐦🐦 @labphon.bsky.social

“From Universals to Variation: Phonetic Grammar through Prosody” by Taehong Cho (June ’26) #LabPhon20

“Dimensions: looking back, looking forward” by Kie Zuraw (June ’26) #LabPhon20

“Articulatory evidence for ambisyllabicity: a modern approach to an old question” by Sam Tilsen (June ’26) #LabPhon20

Thank you to everyone who came to my zine workshop at #labphon @labphon.bsky.social #labphon20! Look at these great zines that people made!! Workshop slides: bit.ly/lingcommzines

Dear #LabPhon20 attendees, help our faraway colleagues enjoy the event by sharing updates -- bonus reposts will come if you tag @labphon.bsky.social!

Prof. Taehong Cho (Hanyang U.) kicks off #LabPhon20 with a pre-conference lecture going “From Universals to Variation: Phonetic Grammar through Prosody” 🐦🐦 @labphon.bsky.social

I love that thing in any linguistics talk where the speaker says something about phonetics and immediately everyone in the audience starts trying to produce whatever it is ALMOST subtly (this is definitely not me and my #labphon #labphon20 neighbour catching each other going /p/ /t/ /k/)

Prof. Kie Zuraw (UCLA) delivers the first invited talk at #LabPhon20: “Dimensions: Looking back and looking forward” 🐦🐦 @labphon.bsky.social

Getting ready for my workshop on Thursday at @labphon.bsky.social Linguistics Communication Through Zines! Does anyone have any sample linguistics-y zines they'd like to share with me that I could bring to the workshop? 🐦🐦

Does predictability constrain the timing of co-speech #gestures? Both prosodic structure and predictability influence segment durations in #Igbo, but the patterning of phonetic reduction suggests #prosodic control of co-speech gestures. #LabPhon #openaccess @kfran.bsky.social doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Can domain-final intonational rises and falls in #German function as attention-orienting devices? 🎧 Pupillometry results suggest yes — but differently across individual listeners' cognitive profiles. doi.org/10.16995/lab... @marialialiou.bsky.social @ifl-phonetik.bsky.social #labphon #openaccess

Speakers primarily use the first formant to cue vowel height. Pitch (F0) can be a secondary cue, but how does its use develop over time? Acoustic analysis of a longitudinal speech corpus shows that children gradually, though variably, gain this use of F0. #LabPhon #openaccess doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Registration for #LabPhon20 in Montreal is now open! Early registration is available through April 30, 2026. All registrants must be members of the Association for Laboratory Phonology. labphon.org/labphon20/re...

In languages like #Georgian, words can begin with complex C1C2 stop-stop sequences (gd, bg). Do their speakers rely on the timing of the 2 consonants to accurately recover C1? Results suggest timing lag is in #phonological grammar. #LabPhon #openaccess @efl-upcite.bsky.social doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Listeners use their knowledge about a speaker to guide #speechperception. How do familiarity with a speaker’s dialect & predictability of the dialect a speaker uses impact processing? ERP results show accent info is used to fine-tune speech recognition. doi.org/10.16995/lab... #openaccess #LabPhon

In ordinary conversation are 'mis' and 'dis' pronounced differently in prefixed than in nonprefixed words, like 'mistimes' vs. 'mistakes'? Yes! but phonetic details differ by dialect, syllable structure, stress patterns & other factors. #LabPhon #openaccess doi.org/10.16995/lab... @jbhay.bsky.social

Women are often associated with #creakyvoice. Do listeners actually hear them as sounding creakier? A #matchedguise study finds that lower pitch makes voices sound creakier, but face gender has little effect, casting doubt on this posited perceptual bias. #LabPhon #openaccess doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Speakers often reuse the variant they've recently used in conversational speech. Does #priming drive this repetitiveness? A study on English ING demonstrates clear #phonological variant priming—but the effect decays rapidly, after only 1 intervening word. #openaccess #LabPhon doi.org/10.16995/lab...

@msonderegger.bsky.social and #LabPhon20 colleagues, can you offer insight here?

Pronunciation of New Zealand English monophthongs varies across speakers, distinguishing ‘leaders’ from ‘laggers’ of ongoing sound changes. But do listeners make social judgements based on these vowels? Yes! doi.org/10.16995/lab... @jbhay.bsky.social @joshwilsonblack.bsky.social #LabPhon #openaccess

Hey #LabPhon community, the Association is growing its social media offerings. Join us over on LinkedIn, as well! www.linkedin.com/company/labp...

Are sound categories separate or integrated across languages in #bilingual speakers? Phonetic recalibration suggests asymmetrical linkages across languages, in this study of cross-linguistic generalization of phoneme retuning by #Spanish–English speakers. #openaccess #LabPhon doi.org/10.16995/lab...