AMALIA ARVANITI

Research

 

Google scholar profile 

 

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Specialization: phonetics, phonology, sociophonetics

 

Sub-specialties: the production and perception of prosody (especially of stress, rhythm and intonation); cross-linguistic intonational pragmatics; sociophonetics; Greek and English phonetics, phonology and sociolinguistics; bilingualism

 

Main research languages: mainly English and Greek, but also Polish, Romani, and Korean

 

My research focuses on the cross-linguistic study of speech prosody, particularly of intonation and rhythm and their interactions with stress, timing and prosodic phrasing. Much of my work integrates my interests in phonetics and phonology with my interest in language variation and change. My research seeks to understand how prosody is produced and perceived, what its role is in language processing, and how its components interact with each other and with other parts of the grammar. My research on intonation has addressed issues in the phonetic realization and phonological representation of tunes, as well as intonational pragmatics. My research on rhythm has scrutinized the production and perception basis of rhythm classes and explored alternative views of rhythm using both production and perception experiments.

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In October 2019, I began two new projects. The first is an ERC Advanced grant titled SPRINT (Speech Prosody in Interaction: The form and function of intonation in human communication). The aim of SPRINT, which runs from 2019 to 2024, is to study the phonetics, phonology, and pragmatics of a number of tunes of English and Greek, in order to better understand the structure of intonation and its contribution to pragmatic meaning.

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My second project was originally funded by a 2-year Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship; the aim of the project is to investigate the effects on Greek phonetics and phonology of the official abolition of Greek diglossia in 1976 and its informal revival after the recent financial crisis, while documenting the current state of Greek phonetics and phonology. At Radboud this project will continue funded by a Mohrmann Grant.

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In addition, I am currently completing research from a project funded by the British Academy, the aim of which was to test compositionality in intonation meaning.  Mary Baltazani and Stella Gryllia and I tested compositionality using Greek wh-questions are a test case. For publications from this project, see my publications page (2018 and 2019).

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Other recent and current work, in no particular order, includes research on Korean rhythm funded by the Academy of Korean Studies and undertaken with Hae-Sung Jeon, the study of uptalk, research on bilingual speech production and processing (with Page Piccinini); Romani prosody (with Lila Adamou), and research on Polish prosody (with Marzena Zygis).