Interests

Psycholinguistics and Computational Linguistics (PsyCoL) Laboratory

My principal area of interest is the intersection between phonology and morphology. My background training is in phonological theory, and within this domain, I work mostly on prosodic morphology, or the interaction between word formation and prosodic restrictions. I find of particular interest the phenomenon of templatic effects, especially in Semitic languages. My dissertation "The Emergence of Fixed Prosody," (UC Santa Cruz, 2000) provides a comprehensive analysis to nonconcatenative templatic morphology that makes no use of template-specific devices; rather, I derive templatic effects ("fixed prosody") from more basic, independently-motivated conditions. Additionally, this approach allows for a view of Semitic word formation that makes no reference to the consonantal root, resulting in a system of word formation that bears remarkable resemblance to that of the rest of the world's languages. This research adds to the growing body of work challenging the existence of the consonantal root as the basis for word formation in Semitic languages. If you email me, I can send you a PDF version of my dissertation.

I am also engaged in work with Andrew Wedel. One of our joint projects involves a study of the root-affix distinction with respect to issues of markedness. Our work attempts to integrate empirical results concerning markedness asymmetries in roots vs. affixes with theoretical approaches and results from psycholinguistic research. This project also relates to ongoing work of my own, stemming from my research on Modern Hebrew, which exhibits an unexpected behavior with respect to roots and affixes known as contrast inequity.

Finally, my work is also taking on an experimental direction. I am very interested in issues relating to lexical access, in particular in Semitic languages. Using auditory stimuli, I am carrying out lexical decision experiments designed to test the structure of the lexicon of Semitic languages; so far, I have conducted initial studies on Modern Hebrew and Maltese, a Semitic language most closely related to Arabic. These studies have received funding support from several internal grants at the University of Arizona, and more recently from an NSF-funded grant from 2007-2010.