Jennifer Nycz

Georgetown University, Linguistics, Faculty Member

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The first thing that drew me to linguistics: the problem sets. I loved scrutinizing a set of data (typically IPA transcriptions of words plus glosses, arranged in neat little columns) and developing an account of the apparent patterns. Nothing's changed, really, except for the data: now I study phonetic and phonological variation, and consider both the linguistic and the social factors which condition it.

I am particularly interested in the division of labor between phonological representations and phonological processes in cases of sociophonetic variation, and how social identities and stances relate to linguistic categories.

For more detailed and up-to-date information, see https://www.jennifernycz.com
Supervisors: Gregory R. Guy

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Daniel Johnson

Lauren Hall-Lew

University of Edinburgh

Julia Thomas Swan

San Jose State University

Soohyun Kwon

Seoul National University

James Grama

University of Duisburg-Essen

Christopher Strelluf

Northwest Missouri State University

Amy Wong

Pocholo Umbal

University of Toronto

Jessi Aaron

University of Florida

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Papers by Jennifer Nycz

Awareness and Acquisition of New Dialect Features

Awareness and Control in Sociolinguistic Research, 2000

* Thanks to Anna Babel and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on this chapter, as w... more

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Variation and change in/r/in the Scottish/English borderland

In spite of three hundred years of union and unhindered cross-border communication between speake... more

Variation in voice onset time along the Scottish-English border

This paper presents findings on VOT variability in voiced and voiceless plosives produced by 159 ... more This paper presents findings on VOT variability in voiced and voiceless plosives produced by 159 speakers from four locations straddling the English-Scottish border. The analysis reveals key effects of both social and phonetic factors, highlighting the importance of both in accounting for variability.

Reliability of formant measurements from lossy compressed audio

Poser presented at The British Association of …, 2010

Reliability of formant measurements from lossy compressed audio

Poser presented at The British Association of …, 2010

Media and second dialect acquisition

Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 2019

This article addresses the role that different types of media might play in second dialect acquis... more This article addresses the role that different types of media might play in second dialect acquisition. While many scholars agree that broadcast media such as television have little effect on individual speakers’ language use, research across fields (sociolinguistics, second language learning, laboratory phonology, and phonetics) suggests that high levels of engagement could facilitate dialect learning via mediated speech. I will briefly describe the mechanisms underlying acquisition of new dialect features, discuss how these mech- anisms might operate when speakers are exposed to speech via specific types of media, and sketch some avenues for future research.

The technology of conducting sociolinguistic interviews

Changing Words or Changing Rules? What Second Dialect Acquisition can Tell us about Phonological Representation

For the record: which digital media are good enough for sociophonetic analysis?

7 The Technology of Conducting Sociolinguistic Interviews

Is Ash-tensing driven by acoustics or articulation? An ultrasound study

This paper presents the results of an ultrasound study of the articulation of tense /ae/ as produ... more This paper presents the results of an ultrasound study of the articulation of tense /ae/ as produced by speakers of Mid-Atlantic dialects of American English. In these dialects, the lax low front vowel [ae] (as in cat and have) coexists with a variant that may be impressionistically described as "raised" or "tense" (henceforth represented by the symbol [ae ]). One striking aspect of this alternation is the particular subset of environments which conditions it. In Philadelphia, [ae ] occurs before [+anterior] voiceless fricatives (e.g. [pae ] path and [pae s] pass), before [+anterior] nasals ([hae m] ham and [pae n] pan), and in the words mad, bad, and glad . In New York City, this set is expanded to include the voiceless fricative [] ([lae ] lash) and the rest of the voiced stops . New Jersey speakers, meanwhile, exhibit a variety of tensing patterns (Ash 2002).

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For the Record: Which Digital Media Can be Used for Sociophonetic Analysis?

University of Pennsylvania Working …, 2011

Sociolinguists now have more options for collecting speech data than ever before. Informants who ... more

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Second Dialect Acquisition: Implications for theories of phonological representation

cf.linguistlist.org

... Blackwell Publisher Login. Oink. E-mail this page 1. Dissertation Information. Title:Second D... more

Second dialect acquisition: A sociophonetic perspective

Many people change aspects of their accent after moving to a new region. What kinds of changes ar... more Many people change aspects of their accent after moving to a new region. What kinds of changes are made, and why does it matter? Studies of second dialect acquisition (SDA) indicate that geographically mobile speakers change specific dialect features in ways that reflect the complex interaction of linguistic, social, and developmental factors in language use. This article reviews these findings from a sociophonetic perspective, paying particular attention to their theoretical implications, the methodological issues associated with studying SDA, and avenues for future research.

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Language and Identity on the Scottish/English Border

by Damien Hall and Jennifer Nycz

Variation and change in/r/in the Scottish/English borderland

by Damien Hall and Jennifer Nycz

In spite of three hundred years of union and unhindered cross-border communication between speake... more

The Scottish/English Borderland: Phonological Production, Perception and Attitude

by Damien Hall and Jennifer Nycz

york.ac.uk

Page 1. Carmen Llamas, Dominic Watt, Gerry Docherty*, Damien Hall &amp;amp;amp; Jennifer Nycz... more

Partial Mergers and Near-Distinctions: Stylistic Layering in Dialect Acquisition

by Daniel Johnson and Jennifer Nycz

Non-mobile individuals living in a community undergoing a linguistic change usually display a pat... more Non-mobile individuals living in a community undergoing a linguistic change usually display a pattern of variation where citation styles are more advanced than naturalistic styles with respect to the change in progress. This suggests that speakers' intentions or norms, while they may shift only gradually, can do so more easily than their productions. Two groups of 'mobile' speakers—adults who grew up in one dialect area and moved to another, and children who acquired one dialect at home and another in the community—showed the opposite pattern: spontaneous speech approximated the dialect of the second community more closely than did word-list productions. Analysis of these speakers' low back vowels (the LOT and THOUGHT word classes) also suggest that most adults can at least partially learn a vowel distinction as well as a merger, though children are able to do both things more quickly and completely.

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Best practices in measuring vowel merger

by Lauren Hall-Lew and Jennifer Nycz

Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, 2014

Vowel mergers are some of the most well-studied sound change phenomena. Yet the methods for asses... more Vowel mergers are some of the most well-studied sound change phenomena. Yet the methods for assessing and characterizing an individual speaker's participation in an ongoing merger (or split) vary widely, especially among researchers analyzing naturalistic corpora. We consider four methodological approaches to representing and assessing vowel difference: Euclidean distances, mixed effects regression modeling (Nycz 2013), the Pillai-Bartlett trace (Hay, Warren, & Drager 2006), and the spectral overlap assessment metric (Wassink 2006). We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each method and compare them by applying all of them to three different data sets, each of which contains low vowel data from speakers whose status with respect to a vowel contrast may not be clear-cut: realizations of COT and CAUGHT in San Francisco, California; COT and CAUGHT among Canadians in the New York City region; and TRAP and BATH among Scots who work in Southern England. We conclude with some practical recommendations.

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New contrast acquisition: Methodological issues and theoretical implications

English Language and Linguistics, 2013

This article presents data on the acquisition of the low back vowel contrast by native speakers o... more This article presents data on the acquisition of the low back vowel contrast by native speakers of Canadian English who have moved as adults to the New York City region, examining how these speakers who natively possess a single low back vowel category have acquired the low back vowel distinction of the new ambient dialect. The speakers show remarkable first dialect stability with respect to their low back vowel system, even after many years of new dialect exposure: in minimal pair contexts, nearly all of the speakers continue to produce and perceive a single vowel category. However, in word list and conversational contexts, the majority of speakers exhibit a small but significant phonetic difference between words like cot and caught, reflecting the separation of these word classes in the new dialect to which they are exposed; moreover, the realization of these words shows frequency effects consistent with a lexically gradual divergence of the two vowels. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for theories of phonological representation and change, as well as their methodological implications for the study of mergers- and splits-in-progress.

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Awareness and Acquisition of New Dialect Features

Awareness and Control in Sociolinguistic Research, 2000

* Thanks to Anna Babel and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on this chapter, as w... more

Download

Variation and change in/r/in the Scottish/English borderland

In spite of three hundred years of union and unhindered cross-border communication between speake... more