Amanda L. Miller
Assistant Professor of Linguistics
(Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 2001)
Department of Linguistics, 222 Morrill Hall, E-mail: am332@cornell.edu, 607-255-5110
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Research
My research generally focuses on the interaction between phonetics and phonology, especially in
Khoesan languages. My dissertation research focused on the acoustics and phonotactics of
Ju|'hoansi guttural consonants and vowels. Another focus of my research is the
articulatory properties of two classes of click consonants, those that involve
tongue root retraction and those that do not. I have completed an ultrasound study with
Khalil Iskarous and Levi Namaseb (University of Namibia) in order to pin down the articulatory properties
of the two distinct classes of clicks
in Khoekhoe. Further studies on these clicks in N|uu have shown that tongue shape is important to this contrast. We have also
studied a class of clicks that were previously thought to illustrate a contrast in the posterior constriction. My studies
have shown that they do not contrast in
posterior place of articulation. I have analyzed these segments as airstream contours, a new type of segment. My research on
the endangered Southern African language N|uu, undertaken in collaboration with Bonny Sands and Johanna Brugman under the
auspices of my NSF grant, has described the entire inventory of 103 N|uu sounds.
Teaching
I teach graduate level courses introducing phonetics: phonetics I (Ling 419) and phonetics II (Ling 420). I also teach
undergraduate Introduction to phonetics (Ling 301), and seminars in phonetics. In the spring of 2002, I taught a seminar on the
Acoustics of Voice Quality. In the spring of 2003, I co-taught a seminar with Bruce Moren (visiting faculty member) on feature
theory and the mapping between phonetic attributes and phonological features. In the Fall of 2006, I co-taught a seminar
with Draga Zec on Speech sounds: their phonetic variability and phonological organization. In the Fall of 2003 I co-taught
Field Methods with Chris Collins on
Khoekhoe. During Spring '06,
I taught
Field Methods on Kabyle Berber with Franca Ferrari.
Graduate Fields Represented: Linguistics, Cognitive Science
Selected Publications
Miller, A., Brugman, J., Sands, B., Namaseb, L., Exter, M., and Collins, C. (2007).
Differences in
Airstream and Posterior Place of Articulation among N|uu Lingual Stops Submitted to the Journal of the International
Phonetic Association, March 2007.
Click here to hear accompanying sound files
Miller, A.,Brugman, J., Sands, B., Namaseb, L., Exter, M. and Collins, C. (2007).
The Sounds
of N|uu: Place and Airstream Contrasts Lee, H.S. and Pittyaporn, P., Eds., Working papers of the Cornell Phonetics Laboratory
19.
Miller, A. L. (2007).
Guttural vowels and guttural co-articulation in
Ju|'hoansi. Journal of Phonetics 35, 56-84.
Click here for accompanying
sound files.
Miller, A. and Zec, D. (2005). Phonetics and Phonology of Contrastive Palatal Affricates. Accepted, Phonetica.
Miller, A. and Zec. D. (2003).
Acoustics of contrastive palatal affricates predicts phonological patterning
Fifteenth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences
Miller, A., Namaseb, L., and Iskarous, K. (In press).
Tongue Body
constriction differences in click types"In J. Cole and J. Haulde, Eds., Laboratory Phonology 9, Mouton de Gruyter.
Miller-Ockhuizen, A. and Sands, B.(2000).
"Contrastive Lateral Clicks and Variation in Click Types."
In Proceedings of ICSLP 2000, Vol. II. Beijing, China, 499-500.
Miller-Ockhuizen, A.(1999)."C-V Coarticulation and Complex Consonants: Evidence for Ordering in click place gestures". In
Fujimura, Osamu, Brian Joseph and Bohumil Polek, Eds. Proceedings of LP '98: Item Order in Language and Speech. Prague: Charles
University Press.
Miller-Ockhuizen, A.(1999)."Reduplication in Ju|'hoansi: Tone determines weight". In Tamanji, P., Hirotani, M. and Hall, N.
Eds. Proceedings of NELS 29, Volume One. Amherst: Graduate Linguistics Student Association.
Miller-Ockhuizen, A.(1998). "Towards a Unified Decompositional Analysis of Khoisan Lexical Tone". In Schladt, Mathias, Ed.
Language, Identity and Conceptualization among the Khoisan. Cologne: Rudiger Koppe Verlag, pp. 217-244.
