becky butler thompson

becky butler thompson
bbt24 at cornell dot edu
I am a third year graduate student in linguistics at Cornell University. My interests lie in the fields of phonology and phonetics. Most of my recent work revolves around Bunong (or Mnong), one of the many languages spoken by the Montagnard people of Vietnam and Cambodia. I'm concerned with the issues of contrast within systems and the phonetic correlates of registrogenesis. I'm also interested in language acquisition, specifically the acquisition of phonological categories and multilingualism. Right now I'm working on the phonology of sesquisyllables and complex consonant clusters. My committee comprises Abby Cohn, Barbara Lust, John Whitman and Michael Wagner. During my time at Cornell, I've also organized or helped organize the following: CLC Speaker Series (fall '07 - spring '09) Ph2 Reading Group (spring '08 - spring '09) NELS 39 (fall '08) Coffee trains (i.e. a line of weary grad students going to get coffee) Linguist kickball! Several other less sophisticated events Degrees MA (2005) Linguistics, University of North Carolina BA (2003) Linguistics & Spanish, University of Virginia Awards Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship for Khmer (2009-2010) Summer Foreign Language Instruction Award (Summer 2009) Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship for Vietnamese (2008-2009) Publication(s) 2006. The Pharyngeal Hierarchy. SKY Journal of Linguistics. 19: 229-237. Courses Taught Introductory Linguistics (UNC-Chapel Hill) Spanish 101 and 102 (UNC-Greensboro) Intermediate ESL (Richland Community College) Non-linguistic Tidbits I'm originally from southern Virginia, which means I don't put much stock in certain diphthongs; therefore the words "wide" and "wad" (of paper) are the same for me. I like bluegrass music and have one nice husband and one mean, fluffy cat. Recently, I've also been learning to box. Cornell Linguistics SouthEast Asia Program

Updated 9 June 2009