The Phonetics Lab held its annual Fall outing at Taughannock Park on October 15, 2017. The assembled adults and children hiked the South Rim Trail, which has many beautiful views of Taughannock Falls. The weather was sunny, warm, and absolutely perfect. Afterward everyone went to the Glenwood Pines for a lunch hosted by the P-Lab. It was a wonderful day for all, and we are fairly sure that the little ones didn't bring home any toads, bugs, or frogs to show their parents.

Phonetics grad student Hao Yi completed his PhD this summer, where he successfully defended his dissertation "Lexical Tone Gestures", where he experimentally studied lexical f0 control in Mandarin within the framework of Articulatory Phonology.

The tired but happy Hao is shown here with members of his thesis committee - from left to right: Dr. Draga Zec, Hao's thesis advisor Dr. Sam Tilsen, and Dr. Abby Cohn.
Hao is now working as a Speech and Data Scientist at Nuance Communications, Inc. in Mahwah, New Jersey. At Nuance, he is using his knowledge of linguistics and statistics to improve speech applications for understanding human language.

The assembled Linguistics Department enjoyed the solar eclipse today - and no one was blinded.

On April 8, 2017 Katherine Blake gave a talk on "Rhoticity in Cajun French" to the Indiana University Linguistics Club, as part of the Indiana University Spring Conference