Faculty

Biography

Morphology

The broad goal of this work is the investigation of the mental lexicon in languages with complex morphologies based on information in the speech signal. The primary focus in the structure of the verbal complex in the Athabaskn (Dene) languages, held to be a classic example of 'polysynthesis'.

Recent work:

When segmentation helps: Implicative structure and morph boundaries in the Navajo verb. Olivier Bonami, Joyce McDonough and Sacha Beniamine, submitted to ISMo 2017.

How to Use Young and Morgan's The Navajo Language: Part 1, the Dictionary. Tutorial

Coding of speech patterns in the brain

This research is a collaboration with PI Laurel Carney (BME) and Carney's Auditory Neuroscience Lab. The long-term goal of this work is to understand and model the neural representation of speech in the auditory pathway to further understand the code input to cognitive linguistic behavior.

Field Phonetics and the documentation of speech patterns in under-resourced communities

Fundamental to lingusitic research in every component of linguistics is the existence of empirical data on the sound forms, especially the documentation of phonetic structure. Without instrumental phonetic descriptions and analyses, available for all better studied languages, linguistics descriptions and analyses are dependent on written forms.

Courses Offered (subject to change)

• LING 107:  Language and Landscape: Water Is Life
• LING 210(W)/410:  Introduction to Language Sound Systems
• BME\LING 216/416:  Speech on the Brain
• LING 226/426:  Morphology
• LING 227/427:  Phonetics
• LING 237/437:  Phonology
• LING 527:  Prosody
• LING 529:  Seminar in Phonetics and Phonology
• LING 537:  Laboratory Phonology

Selected Publications

Selected Papers

• DH Whalen & JM McDonough (2019) Under-researched languages: Phonetic results from language archives. In Routledge Handbook of Phonetics, eds. Katz and Assmann.
• L Carney & JM McDonough (2018). Nonlinear auditory models yield new insights into representations of vowels Attention Perception and Psychophysics. DOI: 10.3758/s13414-018-01644-w.
• L Carney, T Li, JM McDonough. (2015). Speech Coding in the Brain: Representation of Vowel Formants by Midbrain Neurons Tuned to Sound Fluctuations. eNeuro. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0004-15.2015.
• K Iskarous, JM McDonough, DH Whalen (2012) A gestural account of velar contrast: the back fricatives in Navajo, Laboratory Phonology 3.1: 195-210.
• The Dene Speech Atlas: Seeds of the Future. Online, June 2013, update, June 2017 http://www.ling.rochester.edu/DeneSpeechAtlas/
• The Navajo Sound System. Joyce McDonough. Kluwer (now Springer). 2003.