The SRL facilitates many different research projects conducted by researchers at UVic and further afield. The core research program associated with the SRL involves documenting speech production and perception among speakers of Central Salish and neighbouring languages.
Recent grants
SSHRC Internal Research and Creative Project Grant: Hul’q’umi’num’ Kids Speech: First language acquisition of Hul’q’umi’num’ (2022-23).
- This project grew out of the SSHRC PDG – team members were interested in seeing how children acquire the sound system of Hul’q’umi’num’, in comparison to adults. We are in the process of building a corpus of recordings of children participating in early Hul’q’umi’num’ language programming, and have begun analyzing the recordings to understand the developmental pathway of children learning to pronounce Hul’q’umi’num’.
SSHRC Partnership Development Grant: Hul’q’umi’num’ Phonetic Structures: Exploring Paths Towards Fluency (2018-23).
- The goals of the grant are: (1) document pronunciation features of L2 speakers (in comparison to L1 speakers) & work with Elders, teachers, & learners to identify perceived challenges for learners, (2) create pedagogical materials & tools to overcome these challenges, and (3) assess the usefulness of these materials & tools.
- See the hwulmuwhqun ~ xʷəlməxʷqən Pronunciation lab website for more details.
Selected recent publications (past 5 years)
Bird, S., & Onosson, S. (2022). A phonetic case study of Tŝilhqot’in /z/ and /zʕ/. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 1-34. doi:10.1017/S0025100322000093.
Bird, S., J. Leonard, T. Nolan (2022). Pronunciation patterns among L2 Hul’q’umi’num’ learners: Preliminary findings and future directions. Proceedings of PSLLT 2021.
Bird, S. & N. Litvin (2021). Belarusian. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 51(3), 450-467.
Bird, S. (2020). Pronunciation among Adult Indigenous Language Learners: the case of SENĆOŦEN /t’/. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation 6:2, 148-179.
Bird, S. & B. Gick (2019) Ultrasound biofeedback in pronunciation teaching and learning. Proceedings of ISAPh 2018, 5-11).
Bird, S. & M. Miyashita (2019). Teaching phonetics in the context of Indigenous Language Revitalization. Proceedings of ISAPh 2018, 39-44.
Bird, S. & S. Onosson (2019). Differences in vowel-glide production between L1 and L2 speakers of Hul’q’uminum’. Proceedings of ICPhS 2019.
Bliss, H., S. Bird, PEPAḴIYE A. Cooper, S. Burton, & B. Gick (2019). Seeing speech: Ultrasound-based multimedia resources for pronunciation learning in Indigenous languages. Language Documentation and Conservation 12, 315-338.
Howson, P. & S. Bird (2019). Coronal fricatives among L1 and L2 Hul’q’umi’num’ speakers. Canadian Acoustics 39(3): 30-31.
Shamei, A. & S. Bird (2019). An acoustic analysis of cannabis-intoxicated speech. Canadian Acoustics 47(3): 108-9.
Bird, S. (2018). Phonetics in the context of language revitalization: Exploring pronunciation strategies. In L. Matthewson, E. Guntly, & M. Rochemont (eds.) Wa7 xweysás i nqwal’utteníha i ucwalmícwa: He loves the people’s languages. Essays in honour of Henry Davis. Vancouver, BC: UBC Occasional Papers in Linguistics vol. 6.
Bird, S. & S. Kell (2017). The role of pronunciation in SENĆOŦEN language revitalization. Canadian Modern Language Review 73(4): 538-569.
Recent theses and dissertations
PhD dissertations (past 5 years)
Chen, Yu. 2023. The perception and production of Mandarin citation tones by prelingually deaf adults.
Onosson, Sky. 2018. An Acoustic Study of Canadian Raising in three dialects of North American English. (co-supervised with Dr. Alexandra D’Arcy)
MA theses and projects (past 5 years)
Finstad, Tracie tisholas. 2022. sqwiilqwul’tul ‘words used when talking to one another’: Speaking our hul’q’umi’num’ language with our land.
Fortier, Kyra. 2018. An Acoustic Investigation of Vowel Variation in Gitksan.
Nolan, Tess. 2017. A Phonetic Investigation of Vowel Variation in Lekwungen.
Litvin, Natalia. 2014. An Ultrasound Investigation of Secondary Velarization in Russian.
Honours theses (past 5 years)
van Blankenstein, Zia. 2022. Voice Feminization Training: Acoustic Changes and Speaker Perception
Farr, Chloe. 2021. Learning Words with Unfamiliar Consonants in Virtual Reality Environments.
Harder, Kathryn. 2020. What’s the creakin’ deal? The role of pitch and speaker gender in influencing listener judgments of creak. (co-supervised with Dr. Alexandra D’Arcy)
Marshall, Mackenzie. 2018. The rhythm of hul’q’umi’num’.