Donald Derrick's Home Page

Research

I have recently finished my PhD in Linguistics at the University of British Columbia, having completed the requirements on August 17, 2011.

My dissertation research has attempted to explain subphonemic speech variability by taking into account a wide range of factors including potential upcoming articulatory conflicts, a person's motor skills, and constant effects such as gravity and elasticity. I further hypothesize that the relative importance of each of these constraints can change from utterance to utterance, resulting in speakers using categorically different production strategies even within the same context. This research has implications for phonology because it demonstrates that phonological theories must account for phonetic constraints for phenomena previously described as 'free variation'. The research also has implications for sociophonetic change in that individual phonetic variability may play a stronger role in language change than previously believed. Details of this research can be found on my Kinematic research page.

Part of this research includes computational modeling of the human vocal tract with UBC's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as a member of the ArtiSynth 3D Computer Simulation of the Human Vocal Tract project.

I have also worked extensively on simulation and experimental validation of models of airflow during aspiration, and on the study of aero-tactile integration in speech production, which Bryan Gick and I published in Nature. This last study demonstrates that participants are more likely to perceive stop consonants presented in noise as aspirated when simultaneously presented with air puffs to the neck or hands. We have also published follow-up research demonstrating similar results with air puffs to the ankle and the effects of asymmetrical presentation of audio and air-puff information. Ongoing follow-up work includes a study on the effect of aero-tactile stimulation on infants with Janet Werker's lab, and the effect of aero-tactile stimulation on brain activity in collaboration with the Magnetic Encephalogram lab at the department of Otolaryngology at the University of California, San Francisco. Details of this research can be found on my Aero-tactile research page.

My research also includes computational modeling and editing of linguistic theory as the designer and architect of TreeForm, a syntax tree drawing software package. TreeForm support, information, and publications are found on my Treeform page.

I have also studied Blackfoot phonetics and phonology, focusing on the nature of Blackfoot /s/. Current projects also include a general phonetic description of Blackfoot.

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