Panãra, an Indigenous language native to Brazil, is currently the focus of Dr. Myriam Lapierre, Sunkulp Ananthanarayan, Ella De Falco, and Jessamine Jeter as some of the only linguists to document and conduct a comprehensive study on this language. Our research focuses on streamlining the process of organizing and analyzing field data – specifically in the context of Panãra, though generally applicable to other Indigenous and/or under-researched languages  – for use in future research by Dr. Lapierre and other scholars in the field of linguistics as it applies to Indigenous and minoritized languages. We have digitized the data from the field journals of Dr. Lapierre and the graduate students working with her, and our current focus is on the analysis of verb and sentence construction, via this digitized data, to organize grammatical paradigms into efficient and accessible indexes. We are also compiling and organizing PDF, image, sound, video, and experimental data for use on the California Language Archive (CLA) with a similar focus on efficiency and accessibility. The completion of this research entails the more complex understanding and organization of Panãra sentence and word structure for use in future research, both by Dr. Lapierre and by other scholars, as well as for usage in a Panãra dictionary. Our expected results also involve the creation and organization of the CLA page dedicated to Panãra, with a transparent structure making this data available to a wider audience of both linguists and non-linguists interested in learning more about the language.

 The aim of this project is to process and analyze fieldwork data on Triestin to help construct a JIPA (Journal of the International Phonetic Association) Illustration of the language’s main sound systems. Triestin (Glottocode: trie1242) is a dialect of Venetian, a language spoken by approximately 200,000 people in Trieste, Italy. Triestin is spoken at the unique intersection of the Germanic and Slavic language families, and as the number of native speakers of Venetian dialects continues to decrease each year, it becomes increasingly crucial to document the linguistic intricacies of such a vulnerable dialect (UNESCO). Four native Triestin speakers were recorded reading 100 words from a word list. These words elicited vowels in different environments (each vowel sound would be surrounded by other specific sounds), allowing us to record the variations in the pronunciations of each vowel. After evaluating the data from two speakers, Triestin was found to have a 5 vowel system, differing from Venetian and Italian’s 7 vowel systems. Triestin merges the mid-high and mid-low vowels (vowels made with the tongue in the middle of the mouth), a phenomenon not documented in any other Venetian dialect. We found that the two mid vowels vary significantly depending on their environment, raising to [e] and [o] in stressed syllables and lowing to [É›] and [É”] in all other environments. We anticipate finding a system of vowel harmony, whereby the mid-vowels lower in environments to match the height of surrounding vowels. Since Triestin is the only Venetian dialect known to have a 5 vowel system, our goal is to add to the growing body of research on unique vowel systems. In doing so, we investigate the complex relationships between language families and dialects, and provide valuable documentation of Triestin as a low-resource language.

I am studying the phonetic effects of childhood exposure to a secondary language on a speaker’s adult primary language. Although some studies explore the effects of secondary language exposure during childhood on the ability to learn that language later in life, there are no studies on the effects of secondary language exposure during childhood on a speaker’s primary language. This study of two English speakers from the Boston area aged 18 and 20 compares the Voice Onset Time of a speaker exposed to Gujarati during childhood to a speaker from a monolingual English household. Voice Onset Time (VOT) is the amount of time between the release burst of a stop phone and the onset of voicing. While American English has a 2 way VOT contrast with no negative VOT (voicing before the release burst), Gujarati has a 4 way VOT contrast with contrastive negative VOT. I recorded the two participants reading aloud English words containing the sounds /p t k b d g/ as the initial consonant.To assess the extent to which sound patterns might differ between participants, I analyzed these sound files in Praat for VOT, for the F1 and F2 at the 25%, 50%, and 75% point of the following vowels, and for the duration of the syllable. The positive hypothesis posits that the speaker with Gujarati exposure would demonstrate significantly more of the negative VOT characteristics typically found in Gujarati speakers than the speaker only exposed to English. These findings may provide insight into both the process of bilingual language acquisition and the long term effects of childhood exposure to secondary languages. In the future, I’d like to expand the study to include more participants and additional speaking or listening tasks.

This project aims to document the phonology (sound systems) of Triestin, a Venetian dialect spoken by about 200,000 people in Trieste, Italy. Triestin lies at the intersection of the Germanic, Romance, and Slavic language families and thus exhibits many unique phonological phenomena. The documentation of these phenomena is increasingly important as the number of native speakers rapidly decreases. I recorded four native Triestin speakers reading over 300 words each to elicit a variety of words and sentences. In my illustration, I analyze two main phenomena: (i) the vowel system and (ii) intonation. To analyze the vowel system of Triestin, I took 100 words with vowels in different phonological environments (surrounding sounds) and analyzed patterns in their formant values (resonant frequencies that distinguish one vowel from another). I found the vowel system is unique in its reduced size, having only 5 distinct vowels as opposed to other Venetian dialects’ 7 vowels. My analysis describes how this reduced vowel system exhibits variations unique to the dialect, such as raising in stressed penultimate syllables. Triestin sentences also have a rich system of intonation that differs significantly from other Venetian dialects. In my research, I demonstrate how declarative sentences’ intonation is a function of the pragmatics (contextual meaning) of the conversation. The data also suggests that the intonation interacts with the stress of the final word in the sentences, resulting in greater rising intonation for sentences ending in a stressed syllable. The unofficial languages of Italy, including Venetian and its dialects, are extremely under-documented. Projects such as my illustration of Triestin phonology help with expanding the body of literature on the unique features of endangered dialects. This project is also the first step in a more holistic documentation of Triestin, with future projects aimed at studying the syntax and sociolinguistics of the language.

Sound symbolism is a phenomenon wherein the phonetic forms of certain words iconically represent attributes of the objects, qualities, or events they describe. This study focuses on the sound-meaning link in Panãra animal names, using vocabulary from field notes collected in the Panãra community by Dr. Lapierre the summers of 2015-19 and by Dr. Lapierre and PhD students Ananthanarayan, De Falco, and Jeter the summer of 2023. The Panãra vowel system has a combination of features not present in some more widely studied languages such as English, namely, a back, unrounded series, contrastive length, and contrastive nasality. Using this extensive inventory, I assess strength of size sound symbolism created by nasality, height, vowel length, and backness, as well as the interactions between multiple features. I organize Panãra names for different animals and find the average weight of that species. I calculate the percentage of vowels that have a certain feature in a word and assess the correlation between this percentage and the weight of the species denoted using a regression model. Previous research has shown that front and high vowels are associated with smaller sizes and back and low vowels with larger sizes. I predict that the phonetically central and mid series will be associated with sizes intermediate to the peripheral series. Alongside providing observations from an under-documented language regarding its sound symbolism, findings from this study will help guide the continued lexicographic and field research inquiries into the Panãra language.