I am currently a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Delaware, specializing in phonology, and most things that relate to it, including interfaces with other components of grammar, phonetics, language acquisition. Prior to joining the Linguistics Department at UD, I taught linguistics at SUNY Buffalo as a visiting professor; before that, at several Universities in Italy (Venice, Bergamo, Rome); and before that at the Universities of Amsterdam and Nijmegen, in the Netherlands. All of this was preceded by my earning degrees in Linguistics: BA at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; MA and PhD at Stanford University.
Not only do I enjoy teaching, I enjoy learning from my students, who have written dissertations not only on topics in theoretical phonology, but also on such topics as first and second language acquisition of phonetics and phonology, and phonology and music. The languages covered range from English to Bulgarian, Chamorro, Greek, French, Kiowa, Ojibwe and more.
In addition to teaching, I am currently the MA director in our department, having served as BA advisor, and looking forward to also becoming the PhD director next year.
The general theoretical area that has kept me occupied throughout my career is the interaction of phonology with other aspects of grammar – from my dissertation on syllables and raddoppiamento sintattico in Italian, through the development ofProsodic Phonology (1986/2007) with Marina Nespor, and the continued evolution of this theory. The experimental work focuses on the acoustic properties of prosody. To this end, I direct the Prosodic Typologies Lab (previously Stress Typology Lab), where we are conducting a cross-linguistic investigation of the acoustic properties of prominence (stress and focus).
