I am primarily interested in phonetics, phonology, and speech perception, using experimental methods to investigate the nature and organization of sounds within languages and their perception (and misperception) by listeners. I have worked mainly on Semitic languages; my current research projects explore the phonetic and perceptual bases for sibilant metathesis in Modern Hebrew and the acoustics of word-final gemination in Egyptian Arabic. I also have an interest in the debate over the mental representation of words in Semitic languages (i.e. roots vs. stems).
Stop-sibilant metathesis in Modern Hebrew: In my master’s thesis research, I investigated the phenomenon of stop-sibilant metathesis in Modern Hebrew. In binyan hitpa’el, the reflexive and reciprocal verbal conjugation, the /t/ of the /hit-/ prefix categorically metathesizes with a following sibilant (/s/, /z/, /ʃ/, or /t͡s/), giving forms like [histakel] instead of expected forms like *[hitsakel]. This metathesis has been theorized to be perceptual, serving to place the /-t-/ in prevocalic position where it can be better perceived by listeners, the direction of metathesis being the more common sibilant + stop sequence in Modern Hebrew (Hume 2004), or auditory, based on a tendency for the sibilant noise to decouple from the rest of the speech stream, resulting in listener confusion about the place of the sibilant within the word (Blevins & Garrett 2004). Based on data from a speech perception experiment using English speakers, who listened to masked stimuli similar to hitpa’el verbs, I argue that Blevins & Garrett (2004)’s account is correct, with English speaking listeners evincing a tendency to metathesize stop + sibilant sequences into sibilant + stop sequences, despite the higher phonotactic probability of stop + sibilant sequences in English.
Acoustics of word-final gemination in Egyptian Arabic: In ongoing research, I am investigating the acoustics of word-final gemination in Egyptian Arabic. Previous research on gemination in most varieties of Arabic has tended to focus on intervocalic gemination, neglecting crosslinguistically rarer word-final gemination. Importantly, phonological descriptions of word-final gemination in Arabic have assumed that degemination occurs word-finally, with no acoustic distinction between word-final singletons and geminates (Farwaneh 2009). However, acoustic studies have demonstrated that word-final true (underlyingly long) geminates in Urban Jordanian Arabic are acoustically distinct from their singleton counterparts, with stop closure durations 1.5 times longer than singletons and shorter preceding vowels (Al-Tamimi et al. 2010). Research on word-final fake (morphologically concatenated) gemination in Egyptian Arabic, on the other hand, has revealed that word-final fake geminates in Egyptian Arabic are 1.3 times as long as singleton consonants, with no preceding vowel length differences (Jones 2016). In this research, I compare acoustic data on word-final true and fake gemination in Egyptian Arabic, arguing that each is acoustically distinct, similar to Urban Jordanian Arabic, with word-final true gemination characterized by shorter preceding vowels, a kind of “temporal compensation” relationship (Al-Tamimi et al. 2010, 121). The shorter preceding vowel creates the perception of a longer stop closure duration, ultimately distinguishing true word-final geminates from fake word-final geminates in Egyptian Arabic. Typologically, this work adds to our growing understanding of the parameters of variation in spoken varieties of Arabic.
