Latest News

Congrats to Dr. Ashley Keaton and Dr. Georgia Zellou for publishing the following paper in Linguistics Vanguard – Exploring variation in sociolinguistic evaluation across human and machine talkers.

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Congrats to Mohamed Afkir and Dr. Georgia Zellou for publishing not just one, but three papers on Tarifit this year (so far). Click the links below to learn more!

Congratulations to recent PhonLab PhD graduate, Dr. Ashley Keaton, for being awarded a research grant through the University of Iceland! The grant is titled "Developing linguistically-informed technology for cross-linguistic detection of speech and language disorders" – click here to read more!

Congrats to Dr. Georgia Zellou and Dr. Santiago Barreda for publishing the following paper in Glossa Psycholinguistics, in collaboration with Péter Rácz – Social associations between voices and words affect learning.

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Research from the PhonLab was well represented at the 2026 LSA Annual meeting in New Orleans! Four abstracts were accepted for oral or poster presentations!

Congrats to Nick Aoki and Dr. Georgia Zellou for publishing the following paper in Language and Speech: Apparent talker variability and speaking style similarity can enhance comprehension of novel L2-accented talkers.

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Congrats to Drs. Andrea Ramírez Barajas, Michelle Cohn, Georgia Zellou, and Katharine Graf Estes for publishing the following paper in Language Learning and Development: “Es una pelota, do you like the ball?”: Pitch in Spanish-English bilingual infant directed speech.

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Congrats to Mohamed Afkir and Dr. Georgia Zellou for publishing the following paper in JASA Express Letters: Vowelless word forms in Tarifit are produced with longer voiceless aspiration intervals.

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Congrats to Dr. Tyler Méndez Kline and Dr. Georgia Zellou for publishing the following paper in Frontiers in Computer Science: The Perception of Code-Switched vs Monolingual Sentences in TTS Voices.

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Dr. Keaton and Dr. Vonessen's dissertations are now published online – click the links below to read more!

Dr. Ashley Keaton: What does it mean to be a computer? A sociolinguistic analysis of social meaning in perceived human and computer voices.

Dr. Jules Vonessen: Clear speech enhancements of Mandarin tones by L1, Heritage, and L2 speakers.

Congratulations to all of our research assistants who presented at the 2025 Undergraduate Research Conference at UC Davis! Here is a list of all the presenters, all of whom were sponsored by Dr. Georgia Zellou:

We hosted families at the UC Davis Phonetics Lab for the 2025 Take Our Children to Work Day on April 24th, organized by Dr. Michelle Cohn. Children and adults participated in a real speech science experiment and learned more about the research we do at the PhonLab!

Congrats to Dr. Santiago Barreda for publishing the following paper in Journal of Phonetics: Normalization, essentialization, and the erasure of social and linguistic variation.

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The UC Davis Phonetics Lab and Language Learning Lab hosted our Speech Science booth at the 2025 UC Davis Picnic Day on Saturday, April 12th at the Children's Discovery Fair!

Congrats to Nick Aoki and Dr. Georgia Zellou for publishing the following paper in Glossa Psycholinguistics: When multiple talker exposure is necessary for cross-talker generalization: Insights into the emergence of sociolinguistic perception.

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