My research centers on phonetics and the second language acquisition of prosody — how intonation, pitch accent, and rhythm transfer between a learner's first and second language, particularly in L2 Japanese and L2 English. This work combines corpus-based studies of learner speech with tool development, including PraatR (an architecture for controlling the phonetics software Praat from R) and the R package ‘intonation’, as well as machine learning approaches to problems such as automatic classification of Japanese pitch accent.
At ETS, I continue in this vein, applying natural language processing to problems in language assessment and learning.
Please see the Research page for info on my published research.
Positions
- 2021–present
- Associate Research Scientist in Natural Language Processing (NLP), Educational Testing Service (ETS)
- 2016–2020
- Kōshi (Lecturer), Course in Linguistics and Communication Studies, Graduate School of Intercultural Studies, Kobe University
- 2015–2016
- Postdoctoral Scholar, Center for Language Science, Pennsylvania State University
Education
- 2008–2015
-
Dual Ph.D., Department of Linguistics and Department of Second
Language Studies, Indiana University – Bloomington
Thesis: Typologizing native language influence on intonation in a second language: Three transfer phenomena in Japanese EFL learners
- 2004–2008
- B.A., double major in English (Writing and Linguistics Concentration) and Spanish, University of Nebraska Omaha