Dissertation
My dissertation is titled ‘The phonology of contact’. It contrasts typological asymmetries between language contact (especially creoles) and unbroken L1 transmission. I examine three case studies: front rounded vowels, vowel harmony and word-final vowel epenthesis.
- 2015. The phonology of contact: Creole sound change in context. Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University.
- Here is my dissertation defence handout.
- Here is a better abstract than the one in the dissertation itself.
Papers and publications
- 2020. With Anthony Grant and Thomas Klein. Contact-induced change and phonology. In The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact, ed. by Anthony Grant. Oxford University Press.
- 2019. High-frequency initialisms: Evidence for Singaporean English stress. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 4(18): 1–15.
- 2012. Chinese meets Malay meets English: Origins of Singaporean English word-final high tone. Special issue of the International Journal of Bilingualism 16(1): 83–100. doi: 10.1177/1367006911403216.
- 2011. Reconciling stress and tone in Singaporean English. In Asian Englishes: Changing Perspectives in a Globalised World (pp. 76–92), ed. by Lawrence J. Zhang, Rani Rubdy & Lubna Alsagoff. Singapore: Pearson Longman. [Revised 12 Sep 2010]
- 2010. Reduction, frequency and morphology in Singaporean English prosody. Rutgers Optimality Archive #1102. [Manuscript, revised 10 Sep 2010]
- 2009. Non-plateaus, non-toneless heads: Tone assignment in Colloquial Singaporean English. Chicago Linguistic Society 45(1): 487–501. [Last corrected 25 Nov 2009]
Talks
- 2019. Sign language phonology. Teaching demonstration at the National University of Singapore, 6 Sept 2019. [Slides]
- 2019. Singlish pragmatic particles: Tone or intonation? Paper presented at Chicago Linguistic Society 55, Chicago, 16–18 May 2019. [Handout] [Script not yet corrected]
- 2019. High-frequency initialisms: Evidence for Singaporean English stress. Poster presented at LSA 2019 (Linguistic Society of America), New York City, 3–6 Jan. [Poster] Superseded by this paper.
- 2018. Word-final vowel epenthesis: An L2 sound change? Language Variation and Change Workshop, Chicago, 16 Feb. [Handout]
- 2017. A sound change with L2 origins: Word-final vowel epenthesis. Job talk at the National University of Singapore, 9 Jan, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 23 Feb. [Handout]
- 2016. Transmission bias, language contact and sound change. Poster presented at LSA 2016 (Linguistic Society of America), Washington DC, 7–10 Jan. [Slides]
- 2016. With John Victor Singler. The paradox of paragoge in the interior basilect of Vernacular Liberian English. Paper presented at SPCL Winter 2016 (Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics), Washington DC, 8–9 Jan. [Handout]
- 2015. Bâtarde in MS 427: Script evolution is a cycle, or detecting formal technique. Yale Lectures in Medieval Studies, New Haven, 9 April. [Slides] [Script]
- 2015. Transmission bias: What language contact does to sound change. Paper presented at Phonology in the Northeast (PhoNE), New Haven, 4 April. [Handout]
- 2013. When contact doesn’t favor paragoge. Paper presented at SPCL Winter (Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics), Boston, 4–5 Jan. [Handout] Largely superseded by this extended abstract.
- 2013. Paragoge as an indicator of language contact. Poster presented at LSA 2013 (Linguistic Society of America), Boston, 3–6 Jan. [Poster] Superseded by this extended abstract.
- 2012. Seeking articulatory principles of chain shifting. Phonetics lab presentation. Yale University, 24 April. [Handout]
- 2012. Language and ethnic politics in Singapore. Paper presented at Yale-Indonesia Forum: Language Ideologies in Indonesia. Yale University, 30–31 March. [Handout]
- 2011. Creole exceptionalism via transmission: The weak-to-strong harmony gap. Paper presented at SPCL Summer 2011 (Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics), Accra, 2-6 Aug. [Handout]
- 2011. The phonology of contact: Dissertation prospectus defence. Yale University, 25 April. [Handout] [Full prospectus] Superseded by my dissertation.
- 2011. Vowel unrounding in French creoles. Paper presented at SPCL Winter 2011 (Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics), Pittsburgh, 7–8 Jan. [Handout]
- 2010. Reduction, frequency and morphology in Singaporean English prosody. Departmental qualifying paper, Yale University. 9 Apr. [Scripted slides] Also see this paper.
- 2009. Chinese meets Malay meets English: Bazaar Malay and the Singaporean English word-final high. Departmental qualifying paper, Yale University. 16 Oct. [Scripted slides] Superseded by this paper.
- 2009. Non-plateaus, non-toneless heads: Tone assignment in Colloquial Singaporean English. Paper presented at CLS 45 (Chicago Linguistic Society), U. Chicago, 16–18 Apr. [Original slides + handout] Superseded by this paper.
- 2009. Borrowing Tones: Word-level tone in Colloquial Singaporean English. Paper presented at SPCL Winter 2009 (Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics), San Francisco, 9–10 Jan. [Scripted slides + handout] Superseded by this paper.
- 2008. Singlish as a tonal language, thanks to Bazaar Malay. Paper presented at ESEA 13 (International Conference on English in Southeast Asia), National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 4–6 Dec. Superseded by this paper.
- 2008. Affixation, compounding and the prosodic word in Singaporean English. Paper presented at Workshop on Prosodic Alignment at the Word Level. Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, 20–21 Nov. [Scripted slides + handout] Superseded by this paper.
- 2008. Malay meets Chinese meets English: Where does Colloquial Singaporean English word-level tone come from? Paper presented at Workshop on Language Transfer, UWE (Bristol), 9–11 Jul. [Scripted slides] Superseded by this paper.
- 2008. Swinging the Top: A Crux in the Old English Apollonius of Tyre. Paper presented at the Fourth Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium Graduate Student Conference, Yale University, 16 Feb 2008. [Script]