USC College Department of Linguistics

PEOPLE

Rachel Walker

Associate Professor of Linguistics

Contact Information
Office: GFS 301L
Phone: (213)740-3674
E-mail: rwalker@usc.edu

LINKS
Faculty Profile on Departmental Website
Personal Website
Course Information

Education

Ph.D. Linguistics, University of California, Santa Cruz
M.A. Linguistics, University of Toronto

Academic Appointment, Affiliation, and Employment History

Associate Professor, University of Southern California, 5/15/2005-

Description of Research

Summary Statement of Research Interests

Professor Walker’s research explores systematic speech sound patterns in language and their implications for the theory of grammar. Areas of interest include phonological theory, the role of speech production and perception in phonology, and the phonology-morphology interface. Her primary research focus is on phenomena that involve sound segments (i.e. consonants and vowels) and the features that define sound segments (such as whether the sound is nasal or oral, labial or dental, etc.). Topics she examines include assimilation (processes that cause sounds to become more alike one another in a word), co-occurrence restrictions (the exclusion of certain sound combinations in a word), reduplication (the repetition of speech sounds in word formation), and prominence (e.g. sound segment patterns correlated with stressed syllables).

Her recent research has centered on harmony patterns, which are assimilations that potentially affect multiple sound segments or that operate at a distance (across other segments). Her investigations have encompassed vowel harmony, consonant harmony, and nasal consonant-vowel harmony. This work explores local versus non-local dependencies and their typological correlates. At issue are both formal representations and constraints as well as their phonetic or psycholinguistic grounding. Contributions include both individual case studies and cross-language typologies leading to concrete advances in our understanding of the phenomena and their surrounding issues. Research on these topics has involved the study of languages from diverse language families, especially Altaic, Amazonian, Niger-Congo and Romance.

Affiliations with Research Centers, Labs, and Other Institutions

USC Phonetics and Phonology Group,http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~dbyrd/

Publications

Book

Walker, R. (2000). Nasalization, Neutral Segments and Opacity Effects. New York: Garland.

Journal Article

Walker, R. (2007). Nasal and oral consonant similarity in speech errors: Exploring parallels with long-distance nasal agreement. Language and Cognitive Processes. Vol. 22 (7), pp. 1-41.
Walker, R. (2005). Weak triggers in vowel harmony. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. Vol. 23, pp. 917-989.
Rose, S., Walker, R. (2004). A typology of consonant agreement as correspondence. Language. Vol. 80, pp. 475-531.
Walker, R. (2001). Round licensing, harmony, and bisyllabic triggers in Altaic. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. Vol. 19, pp. 827-878.
Walker, R. (2000). Nasal reduplication in Mbe affixation. Phonology. Vol. 17, pp. 65-115.
Walker, R. (1999). Guarani voiceless stops in oral versus nasal contexts: An acoustical study. Journal of the International Phonetic Association. Vol. 29 (1), pp. 63-94.
Walker, R., Pullum, G. K. (1999). Possible and impossible segments. Language. Vol. 75 (4), pp. 765-780.

Proceedings

Walker, R., Mpiranya, F. (2006). On triggers and opacity in coronal harmony. In Rebecca T. Cover and Yuni Kim (Ed.), pp. 383-394. Berkeley Linguistics Society.
Walker, R. (2004). Vowel Feature Licensing at a distance: Evidence from Northern Spanish language varieties. In Vineeta Chand, Ann Kelleher, Angelo J. Rodriguez, and Benjamin Schmeiser (Ed.), pp. 787-800. Proceedings of WCCFL 23/Cascadilla Press.
Walker, R., Feng, B. (2004). A ternary model of morphology-phonology correspondence. In Vineeta Chand, Ann Kelleher, Angelo J. Rodriguez, and Benjamin Schmeiser (Ed.), pp. 773-786. Proceedings of WCCFL 23/Cascadilla Press.

Service to the Profession

Professional Memberships

Acoustical Society of America, 2002-
Linguistic Society of America, 1994-
Canadian Linguistic Association, 1992-