Johanna Brugman

I am currently a graduate student in linguistics at Cornell University. Long, long ago, as an undergraduate at the University of Washington, I majored in chemistry because I like science and in German because I like languages. It wasn't until I was nearly done that I discovered these two interests could actually be combined. Since arriving at Cornell, I have focused primarily on aspects of linguistics related to speech sounds. For various reasons, I have also been working mainly on Khoesan languages

My dissertation explores aspects of the phonetics and phonology of prosody in Kheoekhoe (Nama/Damara), a Khoe ("Central Khoesan") language spoken about 250,000 people in Namibia, South Africa and Botswana. I spent the 2005-6 academic year in Namibia on a Fulbright grant, and took a brief trip back in the spring of 2007 to tie up some loose ends. Now I'm "just" writing. I've also done fieldwork in Upington, South Africa as part of an NSF-funded project headed by Amanda Miller, Chris Collins, and Bonny Sands. Our goal was to investigate and document the linguistic structures of N|uu, a severely endangered Tuu ("Southern Khoesan") language once thought to be extinct, but still spoken today by about ten people. I've worked on parts of the project that relate to acoustics, ultrasound and the lexicon. In addition, I spent several days in Ekoka, Namibia doing some preliminary acoustic work on their variety of !Xun, a Juu ("Northern Khoesan") language. It differs from other !Xun lects in that it has a click that has been called "retroflex", though this may ultimately prove to be a palatal (rather than alveolar) lateral. My non-Khoesan work to date has included a project on the production of English homophone pairs with Abby Cohn, and some preliminary work on /r/'s that I have (sadly) set aside for the time being.

My research interests are somewhat eclectic, but they tend to cluster around issues in phonetics and laboratory phonology. They include prosody, endangered languages (particularly Khoesan), field linguistics, ultrasound methodology, speech synthesis and rhotic segments. More information about me and my background is available in my CV.

PRESENTATIONS

The acoustics and articulation of epiglottalized vowels in N|uu. 2nd International Symposium on Khoisan Languages and Linguistics. Riezlern, Austria. January 9, 2006.

Pharyngeal vowels in N|u. Ultrafest III, Tucson, Arizona. April 16, 2005.

Phonetic duration of English homophones: An investigation of lexical frequency effects. Abigail Cohn*, Johanna Brugman, Cliff Crawford and Andrew Joseph. 79th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. San Francisco, California. January 7, 2005.

Phonetics and phonology of pharyngeal and non-pharyngeal clicks in N|u. Johanna Brugman*, Amanda Miller-Ockhuizen* and Bonny Sands. 79th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. San Francisco, California. January 6, 2005.

Vowel duration as evidence for prosodic structure in Khoekhoe. 35th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. April 2, 2004.

The acoustics of contrasting uvulars: Rhotics and fricatives in dialects of Dutch. Graduate Student Conference, Cornell University. December 8, 2003.

What makes an /r/ an /r/?: Rhotics, fricatives and contrasts in Dutch. Greater New York Phonetics-Phonology Workshop. University of Rochester Department of Linguistics, Rochester, New York. October 25, 2003.

POSTERS

Articularoty characteristics of anterior click closures in N|uu. Bonny Sands, Johanna Brugman, Mats Exter, Levi Namaseb, and Amanda Miller. 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Saarbrücken, 6-10 August 2007.

Articularoty characteristics of anterior click closures in N|uu. Amanda Miller, Johanna Brugman and Bonny Sands. 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Saarbrücken, 6-10 August 2007.

Tongue dorsum location and tongue root retraction in alveolar and palatal clicks in the endangered language N|uu. Amanda Miller, Johanna Brugman, Jonathan Howell and Bonny Sands. 152nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. Honolulu, Hawaii. December 2, 2006. PDF

Lexical frequency effects and phonetic duration of English homophones: An acoustic study. Abigail C. Cohn, Johanna Brugman, Clifford Crawford, and Andrew Joseph. 150th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. Minneapolis, Minnesota. October 2005. PDF

PUBLICATIONS

Miller, Amanda, Johanna Brugman, Bonny Sands, Levi Namaseb, Mats Exter, and Chris Collins. (submitted). Differences in airstream and posterior place of articulation among N|uu lingual stops. (Submitted to the Journal of the International Phonetic Association, March 2007). PDF Sound files

Miller, Amanda, Johanna Brugman, Bonny Sands, Levi Namaseb, Mats Exter, and Chris Collins. (in press). The sounds of N|uu: Place and airstream contrasts. Working Papers of the Cornell Phonetics Laboratory, 16. PDF

Sands, Bonny, Johanna Brugman, Mats Exter, Levi Namaseb, and Amanda Miller. (2007). Articularoty characteristics of anterior click closures in N|uu. In Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Jürgen Trouvain and William J. Barry (Eds.). (pp.401-404). PDF

Miller, Amanda, Johanna Brugman and Bonny Sands. (2007). Acoustic and auditory analysis of N|uu lingual and linguo-pulmonic stop bursts. In Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Jürgen Trouvain and William J. Barry (Eds.). (pp.769-772). PDF

Sands, Bonny, Amanda Miller and Johanna Brugman. (2007). The lexicon in language attrition: The case of N|uu. In Selected Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, Doris Payne and Jaime Peña (Eds.). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. (pp. 55-65). PDF

Brugman, Johanna. (2007). Epiglottalized vowels in N|uu. Unpublished manuscript, Cornell University.

Sands, Bonny, Amanda Miller, Johanna Brugman, Levi Namaseb, Chris Collins, and Mats Exter. (2007). 1400 item N|uu Dictionary. Manuscript, Northern Arizona University.

Namaseb, Levi, Bonny Sands, Amanda Miller and Johanna Brugman. (2005). Let's learn to write N|u! / Laat ons N|u leer skryf! / |iisi ||xa||xa N|u i kaqleke. Electronic primer. Upington, South Africa.

Matano, Yoshihiro, Todd O. Northcutt, Johanna Brugman, Brian K. Bennett, Scott Lovell and James M. Mayer. (2000) Tp* Rhenium(V) Oxo-Halide, -Hydride, -Alkyl, -Phenyl, and -Alkoxide Complexes: Synthesis and Oxidations. Organometallics. 19(14): 2781-2790.