Here is a link to the TOC of the volume:

Abstract of Andries’ paper: Learning lexical indexation.
Morphological concatenation often triggers phonological processes. For instance, addition of the plural suffix /-en/ to Dutch nouns causes
vowel lengthening in some nouns due to the stress-to-weight principle ([xat] vs. [xa:ten] ‘hole’). These kinds of processes often apply only
to a subset of words – not all Dutch nouns undergo this process ([kat] vs. [katen] ‘cat’). Nouns need to be lexically indexed as either undergoing this process or not. I investigate how phonological grammar and lexical indexation are learned when learners are confronted with data like these. Based on learnability considerations, I hypothesise that learners acquire a grammar with default non-alternation, so that novel items are treated as non-alternating. I report the results of artificial language learning experiments compatible with this hypothesis, and model these results in a version of the Biased Constraint Demotion algorithm (Prince & Tesar 2004).

Andries also gave an invited talk at the “2009 International Phonology and Phonetics Forum” in Kobe, Japan in August. The title of
his talk was “Gradient well-formedness in Harmonic Grammar: on the interaction of grammar and frequency.”

Pictured below: Andries, Mirjam Broersma, Maki Aoyagi, Shin-ichi Tanaka.

Alan received the prize based on his many academic strengths as well as his service and leadership on campus.

Alan’s thesis, Voice Onset Time in Japanese Voiceless Stops: Domain-initial Strengthening and Perceptual Salience,  is an acoustic and perceptual investigation of domain-initial strengthening in Japanese. The goal of the acoustic study was to determine whether a set of Japanese consonants exhibited domain-initial—in particular, word-initial—strengthening. It did, which led to the perceptual study, whose goal was to assess whether native Japanese speaking listeners could use the acoustic consequences of strengthening to identify word onset. The perceptual study addresses whether strengthening is perceptually useful.

Congratulations, Alan!

Shortly before he received the offer, Michael and his wife welcomed Jayden Marlo to the world.

Many congrats Mike and Jacinta

From Andries

The class was attended by about 30 people, both graduate students and professors. There was a good mix in the class of phonologists and sociolinguists of the variationist ilk, which made for very interesting and productive in class discussions. I was pleasantly surprised to see how active the phonology research community is in Brazil, and I have learned a lot from my interactions
with both faculty and students in the class.

In the talk, he develops an Harmonic Grammar model of phonological variation that simultaneously allows for grammatical and non-grammatical factors to impact variation. Over 3000 people from all over Brazil attended the conference, and it therefore felt like attending the LSA Annual Meeting.

Abstract available in .pdf

View the slides or  Listen to the presentation

Congratulations, Miyeon!

Abstract: In linguistic phenomena that allow phonological variation,
one variant is often preferred to the others. Traditionally, it has
been argued that the preference depends, amongst other things, on
perceptual knowledge and this argument has led to theories that
incorporate perceptibility in the grammar. The purpose of this study
is to investigate the factors that are involved in phonological
variation. Based on experimental evidence involving consonant cluster
simplification in Korean, I argue that language users consider
information about morphology, frequency and the OCP as well as about
perceptibility and that they apply the integrated information to
consonant cluster resolution.

Kevin McGowan is presenting “Gradient lexical frequency reflexes of the Syllable Contact Law.”

San Duanmu and Xinting Zhang are presenting “The phonetics and phonology of vowel duration in Hungarian”