Research interests
Jennifer L. Smith | Department of Linguistics | UNC Chapel Hill
In a nutshell, linguistics is the study of the structure and use of human language, of the implications of this structure and use for our understanding of human cognition, and of the interaction between human language and human culture and society. Within linguistics, my research focus is phonology, the study of sound-structure systems in language. Work in phonology over the last few decades strongly supports a model of the phonological grammar in which the sound patterns of each individual language are enforced by a set of violable constraints that can be prioritized differently in different languages.
What, then, are these constraints like? My research program is organized around the following key questions:
- Can constraints in the phonological component of the grammar (or their ranking/weighting)
refer to, or be restricted by, information from other components of the grammar?
What is the role of factors such as phonetic naturalness, morphosyntactic word class,
status as a loanword, or syntactic/semantic structure?
- What elements of phonological representation can constraints refer to?
For example, can constraints refer to prosodic constituents such as syllables,
prosodic words, and phonological phrases? Can they refer specifically
to salient positions (or non-salient positions)?
- To what extent are the phonological constraints universally available (either innately specified, or universally induced by all learners), versus language-specific?
I address these broad questions through projects on more specific topics, such as (follow these links for more information and relevant publications): positional effects in phonology (including lexical-category effects/"noun faithfulness"); loanword phonology; Fukuoka Japanese intonation and other work on the phonology of Japanese; and sonority and syllable structure.
Some of my work is experiment-based, involving recording speakers producing utterances in the phonetics laboratory, experiments on blend phonology, or other experimental phonology methods such as artificial-language and surfeit-of-the-stimulus experiments.
Past research projects have also addressed the phonology of other East Asian languages and phonology and reading.
View a list of all downloadable papers and handouts Download my CV (PDF)
Lexical-category effects in phonology (including "noun faithfulness")
(This topic is related to the general research area of positional effects.)
While the morphosyntactic differences between nouns, verbs, and adjectives have long been important in linguistic theory, there are also intriguing differences in the phonological behavior of words of different lexical categories. For example, I have found typological evidence for a hierarchy of phonological privilege, N > A > V. Another typological finding is that category-specific phonological effects are overwhelmingly prosodic rather than segmental. My most recent work on this topic recruits artificial-language learning methodology to investigate whether there is evidence for a bias toward either noun privilege or prosodic effects in category-specific phonology. My collaborative research on blend phonology also explores aspects of category-specific phonological privilege.
Papers, handouts, or posters on lexical-category effects in phonology
Loanword phonology
My work approaches loanword phonology from several angles.
One project looks at the productivity of core-periphery structure in languages with many loanwords, and its implications for the phonological grammar. I have collaborated with Justin Pinta on Guarani, and with Yuka Muratani Tashiro on Japanese, to carry out nonce-loan nativization experiments investigating these questions.
Another project addresses the debate over whether and how the phonological grammar is involved in the process of loanword adaptation, which is clearly also influenced by phonetic and sociocultural factors. I argue that loanword phonology involves a correspondence relation between outputs and the posited source-language (pLs) representation. The pLs representation includes all the information that a borrower has about a loanword's source form, whether that comes from orthography, perception, bilingual knowledge, or even misunderstanding.
Blend phonology
Blends are formed by combining material from multiple source words, with truncation and/or overlap (as in spoon + fork → spork). Blend phonology has previously been shown to be subject to the constraints of the non-blend phonology of the relevant language. In a joint project with Elliott Moreton and Katya Pertsova, and students Rachel Broad, Brandon Prickett, and Katherine Shaw (part of a larger NSF-funded project in collaboration with Fabian Monrose), we argue that blend phonology is also an important testing ground for emergent effects — phonological factors that are typologically attested, but not active in the non-blend phonology of the language in question. For example, we find emergent effects of category-specific phonology in novel English blends.
Fukuoka Japanese intonation
The intonational phonology of wh questions in Fukuoka Japanese shows interesting patterns that bear on current debates about the nature of the phonology-syntax interface. I have recorded Fukuoka speakers producing wh and focus constructions and have analyzed the intonation of these utterances.
Experimental phonology
In recent work, I have begun to apply experimental phonology methodology, including artificial-language and surfeit-of-the-stimulus experiments, to projects addressing lexical-category effects and loanword phonology.
Papers, handouts, or posters involving experimental phonology
Positional effects in phonology
Sometimes, a markedness or faithfulness constraint is enforced only in a subset of the forms of a language. Such positional or domain-specific effects have implications for our understanding of phonology and its interfaces. (My work on lexical-category effects is also related to this topic.)
One line of work in this area is concerned with positional augmentation, markedness requirements that are imposed exclusively on phonologically prominent or "strong" positions. I argue that positional augmentation always involves perceptually salient properties, so it is relevant for our understanding of the relationship between formal and functional factors in shaping the constraint set.
I am also interested in various aspects of positional faithfulness, one approach to the ability of strong positions to resist processes of neutralization that affect other positions.
Papers, handouts, or posters on positional effects in phonology
Sonority and syllable structure
The search for a phonetically motivated account of why onset glides are subject to different sonority restrictions in different languages has implications for the formal representation of syllable-internal structure and the constraints Onset and *Onset/X.
The formal structure of the sonority scale itself can also be a testing ground for other assumptions about phonological theory, markedness scales, and the architecture of the phonological grammar, as in the case of modeling phonological variation (in joint work with Elliott Moreton).
Papers, handouts, or posters on sonority and syllable structure
The phonology of Japanese and other East Asian languages
I am interested in various aspects of Japanese phonology. In addition to my work on Fukuoka Japanese intonation, several of the papers on loanword phonology and lexical-category effects focus on data from Japanese.
I have also looked at phonological phenomena in Chinese languages and Korean.
Phonology and reading
A joint research project with Gary Feng and Elliott Moreton, looking at phonological factors in reading, reading acquisition, and reading difficulties.