Masayuki Gibson

Currently, my main interests lie in the phonetics and phonology of pitch accent in different dialects of Japanese. My short-term goal is to examine the relevant phonetic (production and perception) data and to let them inform the phonological representation of lexical pitch accent, both at the surface level and at the underlying level. I'm interested to see if a target approximation model (after Xu 2005) is a viable model for the tonal systems of Japanese. One of my long-term goals is to work towards a typology of tone languages that makes more theoretical sense than the current "African tone" vs. "Asian tone" categorization and makes room for Japanese-type "accentual" languages.

I am also interested in opacity. While it is generally acknowledged that opacity is the single biggest problem for traditional Optimality Theory, it often goes unacknowledged that not all opacity is the same. For example, if we look at cases of opacity from different languages in the domain of allomorph selection, we see that there is a difference in which OT models (paradigm optimization, cyclic OT, Stratal OT, e.g.) can account for them. This reflects fundamental differences in the sources of opacity.

Another topic of interest for me is the phonetic and phonological nature of preaspiration. In 2006 I did a phonetic study of Icelandic in which I examined the spectral details of tokens containing preaspiration and compared them to similar, non-aspirated tokens as well as whispered tokens in order to see if preaspiration should be treated as the analogue to postaspiration (i.e. a feature on the following consonant), as a part of the vowel (or nucleus), or as an independent segment. While the study was merely a pilot, the preliminary results indicate that the interaction between preaspiration and other speech elements is more complicated than previously assumed.

PAPERS/TALKS

2008. Opaque Allomorph Selection: The Need for Intermediate Forms. Presented at the 2008 Meeting of the LSA.

SERVICES

Co-Editor (with Jonathan Howell) for Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory XVI (2006)

Co-Editor (with Tova Friedman) for Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory XVII (2007)

Student Coordinator of the Cornell Linguistics Circle (CLC) Speaker Series (2005-2007)

TEACHING

Grader for "English Words: Histories and Mysteries" (Instructor: Wayne Harbert)