Research Page

Welcome to my research page! This page has been written for a general audience. For those interested in learning more, links to papers (both published and unpublished), conference presentation slides, and other materials are included below. The links appear in brackets that include a letter followed by a number. This corresponds with the indexing system used on my publications and presentations pages.

Overview

My research is in linguistics. In a nutshell, I focus on how pronunciation patterns vary and change over time in bilingual and multilingual settings. I am especially interested in how heritage languages fit in to this picture. ‘Heritage language’ is a term that has become increasingly used by linguists to refer to immigrant minority languages spoken in bilingual contexts. For example, much of my research has focused on Cantonese in Toronto, Canada where English is the majority language and many speakers of Cantonese in Toronto also speak English. I, thus, address the extent to which English influences Cantonese along with the linguistic and social factors that account for cross-linguistic influence.

Subfields and Research Areas

My research involves and connects with multiple subfields and research areas in linguistics. Research keywords are highlighted in bold text below.

Phonetics (the study of speech sounds) and phonology (the study of sound systems and patterns) are interrelated areas involving pronunciation. The phonetics and phonology of bilingualism raises questions about how different languages interact with each other in individual speakers. Do bilingual heritage speakers have two distinct phonological systems, two partially convergent systems that influence each other, or only one system? To what extent does this depend on age of acquisition, linguistic dominance, language use factors, etc?
The question of language variation and change is central to the subfield known as sociolinguistics. Much of the research that has developed within this research paradigm, however, has focused on either monolingual settings or the majority language spoken in multilingual contexts. Do we find similar factors (such as age or social groups) conditioning phonetic/phonological variation and change in heritage languages as we do in these contexts?
My research is grounded in the conceptual and methodological foundations of variationist sociolinguistics (and in particular sociophonetics research). One important concept is the apparent time hypothesis, which says that age differences in language use are indicative of language change in progress. Thus, to study language change, I compare the speech of older speakers with the speech of younger speakers. In terms of research methods, I focus on audio recorded speech whenever possible. For example, I have used speech recordings that were produced as part of the Heritage Language Variation and Change in Toronto Project. I use phonetic analysis software to measure various properties of vowels, consonants, and other sounds as they are produced in these recordings.
The study of sound change is a research area that developed in historical linguistics, which is fundamentally concerned with how and why languages change over time. Aside from my Cantonese work, I have also studied sound change in Kizigua, an East African Bantu language by comparing older written descriptions of the language with speech recordings from present-day speakers.
Finally, language contact or contact linguistics is an inherently interdisciplinary area of linguistics that brings the areas above together. One major theoretical issue in language contact is how different types of contact settings condition different outcomes of language change. For example, do we find the same types of changes developing in heritage languages as we do in languages spoken in monolingual contexts or in the dominant language spoken in a multilingual community?

Major Research Findings

To date my research findings suggests that certain types of sound changes may indeed be more likely to develop in heritage language and other multilingual contact settings. Some examples include the following:

While Cantonese in both Hong Kong and in Toronto show change, they are changing in different ways. [A6] shows vowel shifts in Hong Kong consistent with principles of vowel shifting observed in other languages. In Toronto, however, the /y/ vowel has retracted towards /u/, which is an unexpected direction based on these principles. In recent work, which will soon be published, I discuss how this is an English-influenced change [A7].
In [A4], I discuss the development of allophonic splits (new sound distinctions) in Cantonese. Their development was attributed to heritage speaker access to more than one phonological system. These splits were further discussed and developed in [T5]. Splits have otherwise been observed less often than mergers (loss of sound distinctions) in studies focusing on monolingual communities and on dominant languages.
[A2] and [A3] discuss the development of a phonemic split in Somali Kizigua. In [A3], I discuss how this change is externally motivated but shows characteristics that are more typical of internally motivated change. This is, thus, an example that blurs the traditional distinction between internally and externally motivated change. I argue that this can be best understood based on the specific type of contact settings involved in the historical development of Somali Kizigua.

Broader Implications

The broader implication of my research is in its focus on lesser studied varieties of language and on lesser studied types of contact settings. Since many areas of linguistics have traditionally focused on idealized monolingual speakers or on the dominant language spoken in multilingual communities, such research is important in pushing the boundaries of what we know about language and about the ways that different languages can influence each other. There is much that can be learned by diversifying the range of languages and types of contact settings investigated in studies of language variation and change. The identification of allophonic and phonemic splits, for example, was initially an unexpected finding. These results also challenge ‘deficit’ views of heritage and minority languages. For example, there are widespread beliefs about how heritage languages are simplified or incompletely developed forms of speech. Allophonic and phonemic splits, however, lead to increased phonological complexity, which is the opposite of simplification. Finally, understanding phonetic variation and change in multilingual communities is important for developing a more complete understanding of how and why language changes over time because multilingualism is not only common in our present-day world but also throughout human history. There is much more to learn from my ongoing research.