Research interests:
Language Variation and Change, Sociolinguistics, Sociophonetics,
Dialectology, Dialect Contact, Collaborative Research with
Indigenous Communities, Tone, Sociotonetics, Sociolinguistics of
Lesser Studied Languages, Sui (a Tai-Kadai minority language of
China), Tai-Kadai (Kra-Dai) and Tibeto-Burman languages, East and
Southeast Asia, Tone Phonetics, Acoustic Phonetics, Endangered
Languages, Ethnic Minority Languages of China, Language and
Gender, Dialect Contact, Communities of Descent, Kinship, Exogamy,
Linguistic Construction of Clan/Lineage Groups, New England
English Dialects, Computational Sociolinguistics, Polynesian
Linguistics
Grieve, Jack, Dirk Hovy,
David Jurgens, Tyler S. Kendall, Dong Nguyen, James N. Stanford,
and Meghan Sumner (eds) (2023). Computational
Sociolinguistics. Lausanne: Frontiers Media / Frontiers in
Artificial Intelligence, e-book, 547 pages. link
Stanford, James (2019). New
England English: Large-Scale Acoustic Sociophonetics and
Dialectology. New York: Oxford University Press. 367
pages. link
Evans,
Betsy, Erica Benson & James Stanford (eds) (2018). Language Regard: Methods, Variation
and Change. New York: Cambridge University Press. 304
pages.link
Stanford, James & Dennis Preston (eds) (2009). Variation in Indigenous Minority
Languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. 519 pages.
link
Articles
and Chapters: Stanford,
James (in prep). Toward a typology of sociolinguistic variation in minoritized
Indigenous languages.
Invited chapter for Kasstan, Grenoble, Gal, edited volume.
Burdin, Rachel, and James Stanford (accepted). Variationist
approaches to f0 for analyzing intonation and lexical tone.
Invited chapter in Sociophonetics: A Student's Guide,
Marianna Di Paolo & Malcah Yaeger-Dror (eds), 2nd edition.
Abtahian, Maya, and James Stanford (accepted). Sociolinguistics:
Language variation and change in social context. Invited chapter
for Routledge Handbook of Linguistics, Eds. Manns, Gaby,
Margetts. Routledge Press.
Yang, Cathryn &
James Stanford (accepted). Variation and change in tone.
Invited chapter in Yoshiyuki Asahi, Alexandra D'Arcy, Paul
Kerswill (eds), Handbook of Variationist
Sociolinguistics. Routledge Press.
Stanford, James, and Samantha Wray
(forthcoming). Revised version of
"Language acquisition and language
change." Invited chapter in The
Routledge Handbook of Historical
Linguistics2nd edition,
Claire Bowern & Bethwyn Evans (eds).
Routledge Press.
Stanford, James (2026). Are we
surprised yet? Expecting the
unexpected in Asia-Pacific language
variation [written version of keynote
talk at NWAV-AP8 Singapore August
2025]. Asia-Pacific Language
Variation 12(1):13-38. link
Stanford,
James (2026).
The roots and
development of
New England
English.
Invited
chapter in
Natalie
Schilling,
Derek Denis,
and Raymond
Hickey (eds) New
Cambridge
History of the
English
Language, Vol
V, North
America and
the Caribbean.
Cambridge
University
Press, pp.
95-126. link
Wei Shuqi, and James Stanford (2025). Multiple levels of
linguistic contact in small Indigenous language communities in
China. Invited chapter for Language Contact: An International
Handbook, vol 2, Eds. Darquennes, Salmons and
Vandenbussche. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton (HSK Series). link Nesbitt,
Monica, and James Stanford
(2025). New England
English. Invited article
for The Wiley
Blackwell Encyclopedia
of World Englishes.
link
Ma, Marcus, Lelia Glass, and James Stanford (2024).
Introducing Bed Word: A new automated speech
recognition tool for linguistic interview transcription. Linguistics
Vanguard.link
Nagy, Naomi,
Holman Tse, and James Stanford (2024). Have
Cantonese tones merged in spontaneous speech? Studies
on the Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage
Languages, Rajiv Rao ed. Cambridge
University Press. pp. 320-20.
Grieve,
Jack, and James Stanford (2023). Let's make some
noise! Using large-scale data sources for North
American dialect research. Invited chapter in Needed
Research in North American Dialects, Erica
Benson & Robert Bayley (eds). Publications
of the American Dialect Society (PADS Number
108). pp. 147-170.
Stanford, James, and Cathryn Yang (2023). Sociophonetics and tone:
The world of sociotonetics. Invited chapter for Routledge
Handbook of Sociophonetics, Christopher Strelluf (ed).
Routledge Press. pp. 76-93. link
Stanford, James (2023). Variationist quantitative
methods in Indigenous language communities: Invited commentary on "The Dynamics of Bilingualism
in Language Shift Ecologies" by Lenore
Grenoble and Boris Osipov. Linguistic Approaches
to Bilingualism.
Yang, Cathryn, James Stanford, Naluo Zhang,
and Chunxia Luo (2022). Generational sound change in the low
tones of Black Lahu. Linguistics Vanguard 8(s5):759-770.
Special issue on sound change in endangered or small speech
communities, Eds. Zellou, DiCanio, Pycha, and Yu. link
Nesbitt, Monica, and James Stanford (2021). Structure,
chronology, and local social meaning of a supra-local vowel
shift: Emergence of the Low-Back-Merger Shift (LBMS) in New
England. Language Variation and Change 33(3):269-95.link
Coto-Solano, Rolando, James Stanford, and Sravana Reddy
(2021). Advances in completely automated vowel analysis for
sociophonetics: Using end-to-end speech recognition systems with DARLA. Frontiers in Artificial
Intelligence: Computational Sociolinguistics Vol. 4, Article 662097. doi:
10.3389/frai.2021.662097 link
Stanford, James (2020). A modern update on New England
dialectology: Introducing the Dartmouth New England English
Database (DNEED). American Speech. link
Reo, Nicholas, Sigvanna Meghan Topkok, Nicole Kanayurak, James N.
Stanford, David A. Peterson & Lindsay J. Whaley (2019).
Environmental change and sustainability of indigenous languages of
northern Alaska. Arctic 73(2):216-28. link
Yang, Cathryn, James Stanford, Yang Liu, Jingjin Jiang &
Luifang Tang (2019). Variation and change in the tonal space of
Yangliu Lalo, an endangered language of Yunnan, China. Linguistics
of the Tibeto-Burman Area 42(1):2-37. link
Kim, Chaeyoon, Sravana Reddy, James Stanford, Ezra Wyschogrod
& Jack Grieve (2019).Bring
on the crowd! Using online audio crowdsourcing for large-scale New
England dialectology and acoustic sociophonetics. American Speech 94(2):151-94.
link
Chirkova, Katia, James Stanford & Dehe Wang (2018). A long way from New York City: Socially
stratified contact-induced phonological convergence in Ganluo
Ersu (Sichuan, China). Language Variation and Change 30(1):109-45.
link
Stanford,
James, Shuqi Wei & Li Lu (2018). Ecologies of Sui
sociolinguistics: A language permeated with rural social
structures. Invited chapter in Christine Mallinson and
Elizabeth Seale (eds), Rural Voices: Language, Identity,
and Social Change across Place. Lexington Press.
91-103. Browne,
Charlene & James Stanford (2018). Boston dialect features
in the Black/African American community. University of
Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 24.2,
Selected papers from NWAV 46. link
Stanford, James, Rika Ito & Faith Nibbs (2018). Language
regard in liminal Hmong American speech communities. In Betsy
Evans, Erica Benson & James Stanford (eds), Language Regard: Methods,
Variation, and Change. Cambridge University Press.
197-217. Mansfield, John & James Stanford
(2017).Documenting sociolinguistic variation in indigenous communities: Practical methods and solutions. Language
Documentation and Conservation, Special Publication No. 13,
pp. 116-36 (Hildebrandt, Jany, Silva eds).
Stanford, James (2017). What is
linguistics? Invited chapter in Daniel Rockmore (ed) What Are the Arts and Sciences? Hanover,
New Hampshire: University Press of New England. 204-19.
Stanford, James (2017). Invited book review of Grammatical
variation in British English dialects: A study in
Corpus-Based Dialectometry by Benedict Szmrecsanyi,
Cambridge University Press, 2013. English Language and
Linguistics 22(1):183-91.
Newmark, Kalina, Nacole Walker & James Stanford
(2016). "The rez accent knows no borders": Native American ethnic
identity expressed through English prosody. Language in Society 45(5):633-64.
link
Stanford, James (2016). A call for more diverse sources of data:
Variationist approaches in non-English contexts. Journal of Sociolinguistics
20(4):525-41. link
Stanford, James (2016). Sociotonetics using connected speech: A
study of Sui tone variation in free-speech style. Asia-Pacific Language Variation 2(1):48-81.
link
Newmark,
Kalina, James Stanford & Nacole Walker (2016). English and
Aboriginal ethnic identity. Invited article for Town Crier/Puritan
Literary Magazine (online Canadian
magazine). link
Reddy, Sravana & James Stanford (2015). Toward completely
automated vowel extraction: Introducing DARLA. Linguistics Vanguard 1(1):15-28. DOI:
10.1515/lingvan-2015-0002.
See also our website for DARLA
(Dartmouth Linguistic Automation).
Reddy, Sravana & James Stanford (2015). A Web application for
automated dialect analysis. Proceedings
of the North American Association for Computational Linguistics
2015 Conference (NAACL-HLT 2015). 71-75.link Yang, Cathryn, James
Stanford & Zhengyu Yang (2015). A sociotonetic study of Lalo
tone change in progress. Asia-Pacific
Language Variation 1(1):52-77. link
Meyerhoff, Miriam & James Stanford (2015). The changing face
of sociolinguistics with a global perspective. Invited
introduction chapter in Globalising sociolinguistics,
Dick Smakman & Patrick Heinrich (eds). Routledge Press. 1-15.
Newmark, Kalina, Nacole Walker & James Stanford (2015).
English prosody and Native American ethnic identity. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 21.2, Selected Papers from NWAV-43. link
Stanford, James N., Nathan Severance & Kenneth Baclawski, Jr.
(2014). Multiple vectors of unidirectional dialect change in
Eastern New England. Language
Variation and Change 26(1):103-140. link
Stanford, James N. (2014). Language acquisition and language
change. Invited chapter in The
Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Claire
Bowern & Bethwyn Evans (eds). Routledge Press. 466-83.
Stanford, James N. & Yanhong Pan (2013). The sociolinguistics
of exogamy: Dialect acquisition in a Zhuang village. Journal of Sociolinguistics 17(5):573-607.
link
Stanford, James N. & Laurence A. Kenny (2013). Revisiting
transmission and diffusion: An agent-based model of vowel chain
shifts across large communities. Language Variation and Change 25(2):119-153. link
Stanford, James N. (2013). Methods in tone dialectology: A
sociotonetic perspective. In Alena Barysevich, Alexandra D'Arcy
& David Heap (eds.), Proceedings
from the Fourteenth International Conference on Methods in Dialectology, 2011.
University of Bamberg Studies in Linguistics, vol. 55. Frankfurt:
Peter Lang. 276-292.
Stanford, James N. (2013). Lexicalized poetry: Aesthetic patterns
in the Sui adjective lexicon. Invited chapter in Jeffrey P.
Williams (ed), The aesthetics
of grammar: Sound and meaning in the languages of mainland
Southeast Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
151-66.
Stanford, James N. (2013). How to uncover social variables.
Invited vignette in Data
Collection in Sociolinguistics: Methods and Applications,
Christine Mallinson, Becky Childs & Gerard Van Herk (eds).
Routledge Press. 25-28. link
Stanford, James N. (2012). One size fits all? Dialectometry in a
small clan-based indigenous society. Language Variation and Change 24(2):247-78. link
Stanford, James N. & Timothy J. Pulju (2012). Invited book
review of Sociolinguistic
Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistic Complexity by
Peter Trudgill, Oxford University Press, 2011. Studies in Language
36(4):947-55.
Stanford, James N. & Jonathan P. Evans (2012). The influence
of Mandarin Chinese on minority languages in rural southwest
China: A sociolinguistic study of tones in contact. International Journal of the
Sociology of Language 215:79-100. link
Stanford, James N. (2011). A 50-year comparison of regional
dialect variation in the Sui language. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society
4(2):120-43. link
Leddy-Cecere, Thomas, Kenneth Baclawski, Nacole Walker & James
Stanford (2011). New England borderlands: A new investigation of
the east-west dialect boundary. University
of
Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 17.2: Selected papers
from NWAV-39. 125-34. link
Stanford, James N. (2010). Gender, generations, and nations: An
experiment in Hmong American discourse and sociophonetics. Language and Communication
30(4):285-96. link
Stanford, James N. (2010). The role of marriage in linguistic
contact and variation: Two Hmong dialects in Texas. Journal of Sociolinguistics
14(1):89-115. link
Stanford, James N. & Lindsay J. Whaley (2010). The
sustainability of languages. International
Journal of
Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability 6(3):111-21.
link
*Reprinted as an invited chapter in Frieda Gebert & Kevin
Gibson (eds) (2012) Sustaining
Living Culture. Common Ground Publishing. 87-101.
Stanford, James N. (2009). "Eating the food of our place":
Sociolinguistic loyalties in multidialectal Sui villages. Language in Society
38(3):287-309. link
Stanford, James N. (2009). Clan as a sociolinguistic variable. In
James Stanford & Dennis Preston (eds.), Variation in Indigenous Minority
Languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. 463-484. link
Stanford, James N. & Dennis R. Preston (2009). The lure of a
distant horizon: Variation in indigenous minority languages. In
James Stanford & Dennis Preston (eds.), Variation in indigenous minority
languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. 1-20. link
Stanford, James N. (2008). Child dialect acquisition: New
perspectives on parent/peer influence. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(5):567-96. link
Stanford, James N. (2008). A sociotonetic analysis of Sui dialect
contact. Language Variation and
Change 20(3):409-50. link
Stanford, James N. (2007). Sui adjective reduplication as poetic
morpho-phonology. Journal of
East Asian Linguistics 16(2):87-111. link
Stanford, James N. (2007). Lexicon and description of Sui
adjective intensifiers. Linguistic
Discovery 5(1):1-27. link
Stanford, James N. (2006). When your mother tongue is not your
mother's tongue: Linguistic reflexes of Sui exogamy. University of Pennsylvania Working
Papers in Linguistics 12.2: Selected Papers from NWAV-34.
217-229. link
Stanford, James N. (2004). Shuiyuzhong xingrongcide teding houzhui
diaocha [Study of Sui word-specific adjective intensifiers]. Qiannan Minzu 33: 34-39.
Duyun, China: Qiannan Minzu Yanjiusuo. link
Software
and Web-based resources: Stanford, James (2019).
The Dartmouth New England English Database (DNEED). Available on
request: James.N.Stanford@Dartmouth.edu
Sravana Reddy & James Stanford (2015). DARLA: Dartmouth
Linguistic Automation. [software and online resource].
Stanford, James (2014). Problem set: Sui adjective modifiers.
Linguistic Discovery 12(1).
Stanford, James N. (2013). Sociotonetic normalization and plotting
in R [computer program]. (Please email me for the R scripts.)
Conferences
and other presentations:
2026 Burdin, Rachel and James Stanford.
Variation in F0. Presentation in Best Practices in
Sociophonetics session, New Ways of Analyzing Variation-54,
Montreal, Oct. 22-24.
Stanford, James. Invited workshop
presentation for Linguistic futures: Language shift and
revitalization in rethinking (socio)linguistic theory,
organized by Jonathan Kasstan, Lenore Grenoble, and Susan Gal.
Paris, France, August 10.
2025
Stanford, James. Invited workshop presentation for Linguistic
futures: Language shift and revitalization in rethinking
(socio)linguistic theory, organized by Jonathan Kasstan, Lenore
Grenoble, and Susan Gal. University of Chicago Neubauer Collegium
for Culture and Society, September 8.
Stanford, James. Are we surprised yet? Expecting the unexpected in
Asia-Pacific language variation.
Invited keynote talk
for the 8th New Ways of Analyzing Variation-Asia/Pacific
(NWAV-AP8), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, August
4-7.
2024
Stanford,
James. Trends in sociophonetics. Keynote talk presented for
Young Scholars Symposium on Sociophonetics, Beijing,
China, December 21-22. [remote]
Stain, George, Monica Nesbitt, and James Stanford. Phonological
foundations of ethnic divergence: The Low-Back Merger Shift and
the African American Vowel Shift as opposite movements.
Presentation for New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV-52),
Miami, Florida, Nov. 4-5.
Stanford, James. Wicked smaaht dialect changes and variation in
New England English. Invited talk for Howe Public Library,
Hanover, New Hampshire. Feb. 13.
2023 Stanford,
James. Surfing the Waves of Language Variation and Change: The
Zeroth Wave. Keynote talk for Academic Sinica Linguistics
Forum-4, Taipei, Taiwan, Oct. 19.
Stanford, James. Phonetics and phonology of recent vowel shifts in
North American English. Invited talk for the
Academia Sinica phonetics/phonology group, Taipei, Taiwan,
Oct. 18. Pater,
Joe, and James Stanford. Social and phonological factors
in (r) variation in 1930s inland Massachusetts.
Presentation for New Ways of Analyzing Variation
(NWAV-51), CUNY/Queens College, New
York, October 14.
2022
Yang,
Cathryn, James Stanford, Naluo Zhang, and Chunxia Luo.
Intergenerational differences in the high rising tone of Lahu Na.
Presentation for New Ways of Analyzing Variation:
Asia/Pacific-7 (NWAV-AP7), December 15, Chulalongkorn
University, Bangkok, Thailand.
Stanford, James, Sarah Karnes, and Monica Nesbitt. Large-scale
observations of the Low Back-Merger Shift (LBMS) in New England.
Presentation for New Ways of Analyzing Variation, October
13-15, Stanford University.
Coto-Solano, Rolando, James Stanford, and Monica Nesbitt. A
nationwide study of the Low-Back-Merger Shift. Presentation for
American Dialect Society Annual Meeting, January 6-9, Washington
DC. [remote]
Sociotonetics: Lexical tone as a sociophonetic variable. Invited
colloquium talk for Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, Feb. 23.
[remote]
Introduction to sociophonetics: Common methods and research
topics. Invited colloquium talk for Academia Sinica, Taipei,
Taiwan, Feb. 23. [remote]
2021
Guest discussant, Workshop on Cross-Cultural Sociolinguistics,
Aria Adli & Greg Guy, organizers. August 27 [remote]
With Jennifer Kuo and Cathryn Yang. Gendered sound change in a
matrilineal/matrilocal community: Yongning Na of Yunnan, China.
Paper presentation for New Ways of Analyzing
Variation-Asia/Pacific 6, February 19, National University
of Singapore [remote]
Nesbitt, Monica, Akiah Watts, George Stain, and James Stanford.
Eastern Massachusetts life and language in the COVID era. Workshop
presentation for "Sociolinguistic research in the time of COVID:
Method, ethics, theory," Betsy Sneller et al., Linguistic
Society of America Annual Meeting, January 7-10 [remote]
2020
Sociolinguistic stratification and language vitality. For the
"Workshop on social categories across diverse speech communities,"
Australian Linguistic Society [remote], December 15.
Invited colloquium talk [remote] for National University of
Singapore, October 6.
With Zachary Cooper. Pitch-related variation and social meaning in
lesser-studied Indigenous communities. Presented remotely for the
UCLA Discourse Lab, April 23.
2019 Sociolinguistic
trios, quartets, and ensembles: New compositions in the
Meyerhoffian symphony. Invited plenary talk for the Australian
Linguistic Society Annual Meeting, Macquarie University,
Sydney, Australia, December 11.
Invited colloquium talk for Stanford University Department of
Linguistics, November 19.
Invited colloquium talk for the Georgia Tech speaker series
"Language, Technology, and Society," Georgia Institute of
Technology, November 6.
With Monica Nesbitt, Sebastian Turner, James King, and Dartmouth
LING 80. Pioneering a dialect shift in the Pioneer Valley:
Evidence for the Low-Back-Merger Shift in Western Massachusetts.
Paper presentation for New Ways of Analyzing Variation 48,
October 11, University of Oregon.
With Jonathan Kasstan. What's so standard about standards?
Co-organized panel session for NWAV-48, October 11, University
of Oregon. With Danielle Barth, Dineke
Schokkin, Catherine Travis, Kate Lindsey. Variation off the beaten
path: Expanding our understanding of social structures. Workshop
for New Ways of Analyzing Variation 48, October 10,
University of Oregon.
Collaborative research on variation and change in less-commonly
studied language communities. Invited talk for 5th Workshop on
Sound Change, June 21, University of California, Davis.
With Zachary Cooper. Resilience and adaptation in
underrepresented language communities. Invited presentation for
the United Nations International Mother Language Day workshop
"Multiculturalism and multilingualism in a megacity," February
21, New York City, The Permanent Mission of Germany to the
United Nations.
2018
With Sarah Gupta and Anthony DiPadova. Deep learning and
sociophonetics: Automatic coding of rhoticity using neural
networks. Poster presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation,
October 18-21, New York University.
Large-scale
data collection with undergraduate collaboration. Invited
presentation for "Workshop on methodological and pedagogical
issues for undergraduate researchers in large corpus projects"
(Tortora, Haddican, Newman, Cutler), New Ways of Analyzing
Variation 47, New York University, Oct. 18. Crowdsourcing
for sociophonetics and dialectology. Presented at "Workshop on
Computational Sociolinguistics" (Grieve et al.).New Ways of Analyzing
Variation 47,
New York University, Oct. 18.
With
Zachary Cooper. Dialectal tone variation in underrepresented
languages. Invited talk for Workshop on Experimental
and Theoretical Approaches to Prosody, October 11-13,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, October.
Voices that need to be heard: collaborative research on variation
in less-commonly studied language communities. Invited colloquium
talk for the University of New Mexico Department of Linguistics,
March 5, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
With
Cathryn Yang. Beyond traditional patriarchal societies:
Examining Labovian principles in a matrilineal/matriarchal
society. Paper presentation for New Ways of Analyzing
Variation-Asia/Pacific 5, February 2, University of
Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
2017
With Charlene Browne. Boston dialect features in the Black/African
American community. Paper presentation for New Ways of
Analyzing Variation, November 2-5, University of
Wisconsin-Madison.
Invited presentation in the "Workshop on guidelines for
statistical reporting of multivariate analysis" (William Labov and
Rena Torres Cacoullos, organizers) at New Ways of Analyzing
Variation, November 2, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Exploring lesser-studied languages with variationist
approaches. Invited colloquium talk for the
University of California-Santa Barbara Linguistics Department,
October 5.
Bringing variation analysis into language descriptions in
Southeast Asia. Invited plenary talk for Chulalongkorn
University Summer School of Southeast Asian Linguistics
(CU-SEAL 2017), June 14, Bangkok, Thailand.
Variation in indigenous Southeast Asian languages. Invited summer
course for the Chulalongkorn University Summer School of
Southeast Asian Linguistics (CU-SEAL 2017), June 12-15,
Bangkok, Thailand.
With Kalina Newmark and Nacole Walker. Indigenous ethnic
identity and English features of Native American and Canadian
First Nations communities. Presentation for American
Association of Applied Linguistics, March 18-21, Portland,
Oregon.
2016
With Chaeyoon Kim, Ezra Wyschogrod, Sravana Reddy. A large-scale
online study of dialect variation in the US Northeast:
Crowdsourcing with Amazon Mechanical Turk. Paper presented at New
Ways of Analyzing Variation, November 3-6, Vancouver.
With Katia Chirkova & Dehe Wang. Variation in Ganluo Ersu
consonants: The changing sociolinguistics of an ethnic minority in
China. Paper presented at NWAV-Asia/Pacific 4(NWAV-AP4),
April 22-24, Chiayi, Taiwan.
With Cathryn Yang. Language attrition contributes to tone change
in Yangliu Lalo. Paper presented at NWAV-Asia/Pacific 4(NWAV-AP4),
April 22-24, Chiayi, Taiwan.
Invited plenary talks forWellsprings of Linguistic
Diversity Forum Dialogue: (1) Sociolinguistics of
Sui clans and other communities of descent. (2) Investigating
language variation and change in small communities. Australian
National University Department of Linguistics, Languages and
Cultures, February 1-5, Canberra, Australia.
With Katia Chirkova & Dehe Wang. Documenting consonantal
variation in Ganluo Ersu. Paper presentation in the "Documenting
variation in endangered languages" symposium, Linguistic Society of America Annual
Meeting, January 7-10, Washington DC.
2015
Developing collaborative research with undergraduate students.
Invited talk/workshop, Rice University Department of Linguistics,
December 9.
With Sravana Reddy & Michael Lefkowitz. Automatic speech
recognition in sociophonetics: Using DARLA for completely
automated measurements. Workshop at New Ways of Analyzing Variation, October 22,
University of Toronto.
Exploring variation in indigenous minority languages. Invited talk
for New Empirical Methods in
Fieldwork, June
12, University of Oregon Department of Linguistics.
Footnote or focus? Describing language variation in a field
setting. Invited workshop for New
Empirical Methods in Fieldwork, June 13, University of Oregon Department of
Linguistics.
When dialects collide. Invited keynote talk for the Senior Honors
Dinner, May 21, Dartmouth.
Mysteries of uniformity: Perspectives from less commonly studied
speech communities. Invited talk for Sociolinguistic Frontiers: Special Panel on the
Occasion of William Labov's Retirement (Penn Linguistics Conference
39), March 20, University of Pennsylvania.
Dialects in New England and the world. Invited presentation for
the World Affairs Council of New Hampshire, US State Department
International Visitor Leadership Program, March 11, Southern New
Hampshire University.
With Kelsey Sipple & Dartmouth LING 80 class. Boston Strong:
South Boston dialect features across 70 years of apparent time.
Paper presented at Linguistic
Society of America Annual Meeting, January 9, Portland,
Oregon.
2014
The rise and fall of speech communities. Colloquium talk presented
for the Rice University Department of Linguistics, November 20.
With Sravana Reddy. Is the future almost here? Large-scale
completely automated vowel extraction of free speech. Paper
presented at New Ways of
Analyzing Variation, October 23, Chicago.
With Cathryn Yang & Zhengyu Yang. An apparent-time study of
tone change in progress in Lalo. Paper presented at NWAV-Asia/Pacific 3, May 1,
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Analyzing variation and change in New England English dialects.
Invited presentation for the World Affairs Council of New
Hampshire, US State Department International Visitor Leadership
Program, March 21, Southern New Hampshire University.
With Kenneth Baclawski & Nathan Severance. 146 years of
"Canadian Raising" in New Hampshire. Paper presented at the American Dialect Society Annual
Meeting, January 2, Minneapolis.
With Sravana Reddy & Joy Zhong. A "big data" Twitter-based
study of newly formed clippings in English. Paper presented at the
American Dialect Society Annual
Meeting, January 4, Minneapolis.
2013
New ways of analyzing tone variation: Sociophonetic analysis of
tone in Sui conversation. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 42,
October 17-20, Pittsburgh.
With Maya Ravindranath, Nicole Chartier & Hannah Perry. New
evidence of dialect shift in northern New England. Poster
presented at New Ways of
Analyzing Variation 42, October 17-20, Pittsburgh.
Variationist approaches to tone in Sino-Tibetan area linguistics.
Plenary talk presented at the International
Conference
on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (ICSTLL-46), Dartmouth
College, August 7-10. PDF of
the presentation.
Language acquisition and language change. Invited talk presented
at the Foundations of
Historical Linguistics workshop in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of America Annual
Meeting, Boston, January 5.
With Nathan Severance and Kenneth Baclawski. Interrupted
transmission: Eastern New England dialect features in rural
central New Hampshire. Paper presented at the Linguistic Society of America Annual
Meeting, Boston, January 3.
Recent dialect research in New Hampshire and Vermont. Invited talk
presented for the Plymouth State University Department of
Languages and Linguistics, Plymouth, New Hampshire, February 28.
2012
Transmission and diffusion in rural China and rural New England:
Evidence for the "outward orientation" of the language learning
faculty. Invited colloquium talk presented for the University of
Pennsylvania Department of Linguistics, November 29.
Variation in indigenous minority languages: Theoretical impact and
research challenges. Invited colloquium talk presented for the
Swarthmore College Department of Linguistics, November 28.
With Laurence Kenny. An agent-based simulation of gender and
language variation. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 41, Indiana
University, October 26.
Invited workshop for New Ways
of Analyzing Variation 41, Indiana University:
"Sociolinguistic fieldwork in minority communities" (with Carmen
Fought, Kalina Newmark & Nacole Walker), October 25.
With Ian Stewart. The question of density: Multi-agent modeling of
field data in Sui exogamous villages. Paper presented at NWAV-ASIA/PACIFIC 2,
Tokyo, Japan, National Institute for Japanese Language and
Linguistics, August 1-4.
With Thomas Leddy-Cecere and Kenneth Baclawski. Farewell to the
Founders: Dramatic changes between eastern and western New
England. Paper presented at the American
Dialect Society Annual
Meeting, Portland, Oregon, January 6.
2011
Dialectometry and place in a clan-based indigenous society. Paper
presented at New Ways of
Analyzing Variation 40, Georgetown University, October
28.
With Laurence Kenny. Testing transmission and diffusion with an
agent-based model. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 40, Georgetown
University, October 28.
Methods in tone dialectology. Paper presented at Methods in Dialectology 14,
University of Western Ontario, Canada, August 3.
With Yanhong Pan. Dialect acquisition and exogamy in a Zhuang
minority village in southern China. Paper presented at NWAV-ASIA/PACIFIC,
University of Delhi, India, February 24.
Workshop on socio-tonetics for East and Southeast Asian languages.
Presented at NWAV-ASIA/PACIFIC,
University of Delhi, India, February 23.
2010
Adding diversity to dialectology: A real-time study across 50
years in a clan-based indigenous Sui region in rural China. Paper
presented at New Ways of
Analyzing Variation 39, University of Texas-San Antonio,
November 6.
Panel organizer: "Variation in less commonly studied minority
languages" at New Ways of
Analyzing Variation 39, University of Texas-San Antonio,
November 6.
With Thomas Leddy-Cecere, Kenneth Baclawski, Nacole Walker, and
Dartmouth Dialectology. New England borderlands: A new
investigation of the east-west dialect boundary. Paper presented
at New Ways of Analyzing
Variation 39, University of Texas-San Antonio, November
4.
Variationist sociolinguistics in indigenous minority languages.
Colloquium talk presented for the University of Chicago
Linguistics Department, University of Chicago, May 13.
Socio-tonetic perspectives on Sui clans: "Communities of Descent."
Invited talk presented for the University
of Chicago Language Variation and Change Workshop,
University of Chicago, May 14.
Variation in less commonly studied languages. Colloquium talk
presented for the Yale University Department of Linguistics, Yale
University, January 18.
With Allyson Ettinger and Mai Youa Moua. Linguistic construction
of gender and generations in Hmong American communities. Paper
presented for the Linguistic
Society of America Annual Meeting, Baltimore, Maryland,
January 10.
Variation in adjective expressives among Sui clans. Paper
presented for the Linguistic
Society of America Annual Meeting, Baltimore, Maryland,
January 8.
2009
With Faith Nibbs. Multiple layers of hybridity in Texas: Dialects
and intermarriage between Hmong supra-clan divisions. Paper
presented at the 108th Annual
Meeting of the American Anthropological Association,
Philadelphia, December 6.
The role of less commonly studied languages in theory and
description: Sociolinguistic reflections. Invited talk/panelist
for the Biennial Conference of
the Rice Linguistics Society, Rice University, February
21.
Linguistic construction of gender in Hmong American communities.
Paper presented for the Feminist
Inquiry Seminar, November 3, Dartmouth College.
2008
Organizer of an invited special session on "Variation and change
in less commonly studied minority languages" at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV-37),
November 7, Houston.
"For better or for worse, for your dialect or for mine": Hmong
Daw/Mong Leng dialect contact through marriage. Paper presented at
New Ways of Analyzing Variation
(NWAV-37), November 7, Houston.
Becoming R-ful: Introductory R for linguists. Workshop presented
for the Rice University
Linguistics Society, March 20.
Dialect contact, identity, and tone. Colloquium talk presented at
Academia Sinica, March 6, Taipei, Taiwan.
With Nancy Niedzielski. New directions in sociolinguistics. Paper
presented at the Joint National
Taiwan University-Rice University Workshop on Linguistics,
March 3, Taipei, Taiwan.
Dialect non-convergence in exogamous Sui clans. Poster presented
at the Linguistic Society of
America Annual Meeting, January 5, Chicago.
2007
Clan identity performed linguistically: A study of inter-clan
immigration among of the Sui people of Guizhou, China. Paper
presented at the 106th Annual
Meeting of the American Anthropological Association,
December 2, Washington, DC.
The road less traveled: Indigenous minority languages and
variationist sociolinguistics. Poster presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV-36),
October 12, University of Pennsylvania.
Dialect contact in Sui clans. Colloquium presented for the Rice
University Department of Linguistics, September 20.
Using R for vowel normalization and plotting. Workshop presented
for Friends of Sociolinguistics,
April 18, Michigan State University.
2006
Identity and dialect contact in Sui speech communities. Paper
presented at the Michigan
Linguistic Society Annual Meeting, October 28, Oakland
University.
Dialect acquisition among Sui exogamous women. Paper presented at
the Linguistic Society of
America Summer Meeting, June 24, Michigan State
University.
With Bo-Young Kwon. Child acquisition of /s/+C clusters: /s/
perceived as a degenerate syllable. Paper presented at the Linguistic Society of America Summer
Meeting, June 23, Michigan State University.
2005
When your mother tongue is not your mother's tongue: Linguistic
reflexes of Sui exogamy. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation
(NWAV-34), October 22, New York University.
Poetic morpho-phonology: Rhyme, alliteration, emergence of the
unmarked, and identity avoidance revealed in Sui adjective
reduplication. Paper presented at the Third Workshop on Theoretical East Asian Linguistics (TEAL-3),
July 22, Harvard University.
