The Taula Catalana meets the first Thursday and third Wednesday of every month at 5:30pm at Hendershot's Coffee Bar. Contact Sophie Durand for more details. Hi ens veurem!

“Applying the variationist methodology to L2 phonology: the Spanish trill /r/”

Sara Zahler (PhD student, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, Indiana University)

“Phonological closeness between phonetically distinct vowel phonemes”

Standard Italian has seven vowels: /i e ɛ a o ɔ u/. But how strong is the distinction between /e/ vs. /ɛ/ and /o/ vs. /ɔ/? Do people really speak like the dictionary prescribes? Our study investigates the validity of the conventional descriptions of Italian and probes the correspondence between speakers’ productions and their intuitions, with the ultimate aim of understanding how such cases can be incorporated into theories of phonological contrast and historical change.

The Romance Languages faculty and staff would like to welcome all our new graduate students in French, Italian, Portuguese, Romance Languages, and Spanish!