Home > Events > LSLT: Meg Cychosz (HESP)
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LSLT: Meg Cychosz (HESP)

Time: 
Thursday, October 21, 2021 - 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM
Location: 
Language Science Center and Zoom (https://go.umd.edu/lslt-zoom)

 

Coarticulation, compensation, and language change

The speech stream is highly variable and context-dependent.  My research program investigates how speakers, especially children, comprehend and reproduce this variable speech over the lifespan—processes that often lead to language change. This particular talk will focus on two groups of young children: bilingual children in a community undergoing language shift and children with cochlear implants.  I will examine how these children learn to reproduce speech variation despite variable input stemming from their unique learning environments. In doing so, I will illustrate how children can drive, and forestall, language change. Throughout the talk, I’ll additionally present some useful computational tools that I’ve developed to harness, process, and manage large quantities of phonetic fieldwork data—tools that are relevant for any speech scientist or general linguistic fieldworker. Overall, the talk will view phonetic acquisition through the lens of multiple learning environments to inform phonetic and linguistic theory.