Paul De Decker
- Assistant Professor
- B.A., M.A. York
- Ph.D. New York
Research Interests
I am a faculty research member of the Memorial University Sociolinguistics Laboratory (MUSL) and the Speech Sciences and Language Acquisition Laboratory at Memorial University where I study sociolinguistics issues involved with Dialect Contact, Rural to Urban Migration, Experimental Methods and Acoustic, Articulatory and Perceptual mechanism of sound change.
Contact Info
- Office: SN3043
- Telephone:(709) 864-8132
- Email: pauldd AT mun DOT ca
Classes
LING 2210: Language in Newfoundland and Labrador
LING 3210: Language Variation and Change
LING 3104: Phonetics
LING 4210/6210: Sociolinguistics
LING 4700/6700: Experimental Phonetics
LING 7000: Graduate Seminar in Research Methods
Research Papers
(forthcoming). The Technology of Conducting Sociolinguistic Interviews. In Christine Mallinson, Becky Childs and Gerard Van Herk (Eds.), Data Collection in Sociolinguistics: Methods and Applications. Routledge. With Jennifer Nycz.
(forthcoming). Are Tense [æ]s Really Tense? The Mapping Between Articulation and Acoustics. Lingua. With Jennifer Nycz.
(2011). For the record: Which digital media are good enough for sociophonetic analysis?. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 17(2). Article 7. With Jennifer Nycz.
2010. Stop signs: The intersection of interdental fricatives and identity in Newfoundland. Selected papers from NWAV 38, Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics Vol. 16.2. With Becky Childs, Rachel Deal, Tyler Kendall, Jennifer Thorburn, Maia Williamson & Gerard Van Herk.
2009. Sounds Shifty: Gender and age differences in perceptual categorization during a phonetic change in progress. Selected papers from NWAV 37, Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. Vol. 15.2.
2006. A real-time investigation of social and phonetic changes in post-adolescence. Selected papers from NWAV 34, Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. Vol. 12.2.
2006. Are Tense [æ]s Really Tense? An Ultrasound Study. Proceedings of the 29th Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium. Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. Vol. 12.1. With Jennifer Nycz.
2002. Hangin' & Retractin' : Adolescent social practice and sound change in an Ontario small town. Selected papers from NWAV 30. Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. Vol. 8.3.
2000. “Slept through the ice”: a further look at lax vowel lowering in Canadian English. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics Vol. 18: Sociolinguistic Dialectology Issue. With Sara Mackenzie.
Research Presentations
2011. Collaborative surveys in undergraduate classes. With Gerard Van Herk and Jennifer Thorburn.
2011. Digital Recording Options for Geographically Remote Informants. Methods in Dialectology XIV. University of Western Ontario. With Jennifer Nycz.
2011. Organizational identity and phonetic variation at the local coffee shop. American Dialect Society Annual Meeting. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
2010. New Media Technology As Sociophonetic Data Collection Tools. Experimental Approaches to Production and Perception. With Jennifer Nycz.
2010. For the record: which digital media are good enough for sociophonetic analysis? New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 39. San Antonio, Texas. With Jennifer Nycz.
2010. Gradient social sensitivity and syntactic parameters. Language Contact and Change - Grammatical Structure Encounters the Fluidity of Language. Norwegian University of Science and Technology NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. With Phil Branigan and Gerard Van Herk.
2010. Stopping Grounds: institutional identity and phonetic variation in the coffee shops of St. John's, Newfoundland. International Linguistics Association. State University of New York, New Paltz, NY.
2010 Reliability of formant measurements from lossy compressed audio. British Academy of Academic Phoneticians Colloquium. London, England. March 29-31. With James Bulgin and Jennifer Nycz.
2009. Stop signs: The intersection of interdental fricatives and identity in Newfoundland. New Ways of Analyzing Variation 38. Ottawa, ON, October 22-25. With Childs, Becky, Rachel Deal, Tyler Kendall, Jennifer Thorburn, Maia Williamson & Gerard Van Herk.
2008. Gender Differences in the Perception of Phonetic Categories During a Sound Change in Progress. New Ways of Analyzing Variation 37. Rice University, Houston, Texas.
2006. New ways of analyzing vowels: Comparing formant contours using smoothing spline ANOVA. New Ways of Analyzing Variation 35. Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. With Jennifer Nycz.
2005. Urban Migration, Social Mobility and Phonetic Shift: A Longitudinal Study. New Ways of Analyzing Variation 34. New York University.
2005. What lies beneath? Studying variation through ultrasound. The Twelfth International Conference on Methods in Dialectology, Université de Moncton, Moncton, New Brunswick. With Jennifer Nycz.
2005. Stabilization techniques for ultrasound imaging of speech articulations. The 149th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. Vancouver, Canada. With Lisa Davidson.
2005. Is 'ash'-tensing driven by acoustics or articulation? An ultrasound study. The 29th Penn Linguistics Colloquium, University of Pennsylvania. With Jennifer Nycz.
2005. Polarity judgments: an empirical view. Workshop on Polarity from Different Perspectives. New York University. With Eric Larsson and Andrea Martin.
2003. Modeling Co-articulatory-Acoustic Relations of Canadian English (æ). New Ways of Analyzing Variation 32. University of Pennsylvania.
2001. Hangin' & Retractin' : Adolescent social practice and sound change in an Ontario small town. New Ways of Analyzing Variation 30. North Carolina State University.
2000. An acoustic analysis of the vowel spaces of lax vowel lowerers. New Ways of Analyzing Variation 29. Michigan State University.
1999. “Slept through the ice”: a further look at lax vowel lowering in Canadian English. New Ways of Analyzing Variation 28. Toronto, Ontario. With Sara Mackenzie.
Invited Talks
2010. Phon goes phonetic: a sociophonetician's vision. PhonBank Future Directions. Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Canada.
2010. Using DLC Software for Speech Science Research and Second Language Teaching. Grand Opening of the Digital Language Centre. Memorial University of Newfoundland. With Yvan Rose.
2008. Sociophonetics: measuring variation by frequency and degree. LING 3210, Language Variation and Change at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
2005. The Role of Mutual Engagement in Sociophonetic Uniformity. Graduate student symposium on New Directions in the Study of Canadian English at the Canadian English in the Global Context conference (in honour of Dr. Jack Chambers).