Elisabeth Selkirk
Department of LinguisticsI work primarily in phonological theory and on the interfaces of phonology with other components of grammar. In recent years I have been pursuing my long-standing interest in the syntax-phonology interface, in particular as it involves intonation, and have been interested in intonation as it relates to meaning. Much of my work at the syntax-phonology interface has centered on the system of constraints for relating syntactic phrase structure to prosodic constituent structure, and on the interaction of these constraints with properly phonological constraints in determining the prosodic structure organization of the sentence. My recent NSF-supported research on the reflexes of Focus in phonology has led me to entertain the hypothesis that interface-induced Focus stress-prominence lies behind the full range of phonological and phonetic properties of Focus. The languages whose sentence phonology I have been exploring in greatest depth include English and Japanese. Some of my recent work at the morphology-phonology interface includes investigations into the phonology and morphosyntax of clitics and into the nature of affix classes. Over the years, my interest in the various interfaces has spun off into work on the theory of prosodic structure itself (feet, syllables, prosodic word, the various levels of phrasing), into work on the metrical grid, and into work in the theory of tone. I have also done research on the nature and organization of phonological features.
Recent Papers
Some of the papers can be downloaded from the UMass Linguistics Paper Archive. Selkirk, Elisabeth. 2005. Comments on Intonational Phrasing in English. In Prosodies: Selected papers from the Phonetics and Phonology in Iberia Conference, 2003.(Phonetics and Phonology Series.) ed. S. Frota, M. Vigario, M. and J. Freitas, Mouton de Gruyter. Selkirk, Elisabeth. 2006. Bengali intonation revisited: An optimality theoretic analaysis in which FOCUS stress prominence drives FOCUS phrasing. In Topic and Focus: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective, eds. Chung-Min Lee, Matthew Gordon and Daniel Buering, 217-246. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Selkirk, Elisabeth, Shinya, Takahito, and Kawahara, Shigeto. 2004. Phonological and phonetic effects of minor phrase length on f0 in Japanese. In Speech Prosody 2004: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Speech Prosody, 183-187. Nara: Japan. Selkirk, Elisabeth, Shinya, Takahito and Sugahara, Mariko. 2003. Degree of initial lowering in Japanese as a reflex of prosodic structure organization. In Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 399-402. Barcelona: Spain. Selkirk, Elisabeth. 2001 On the phonologically-driven nonrealization of function words. In The Proceeding of The Berkeley Linguistic Society 29. Selkirk, Elisabeth. 2003. Sentence phonology. In The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 2nd edition, ed. William Frawley and William Bright. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Selkirk, Elisabeth. 2002. Contrastive FOCUS vs. presentational focus: Prosodic evidence from right node raising in English. In Speech Prosody 2002: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Speech Prosody, Aix-en-Provence, 643-646. Selkirk, Elisabeth. 2001. The syntax-phonology interface. In International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, eds. N.J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes, 15407-15412. Oxford: Pergamon. Selkirk, Elisabeth. 2000. The interaction of constraints on prosodic phrasing. In Prosody: Theory and Experiment, ed. Merle Horne, 231-262. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishing. Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1995. Sentence prosody: intonation, stress, and phrasing. In The Handbook of Phonological Theory, ed. John A. Goldsmith, 550-569. Cambridge, MA, and Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1995. The prosodic structure of function words. In Papers in Optimality Theory, ed. Jill Beckman, Laura Walsh Dickey, and Suzanne Urbanczyk, 439-70. Amherst, MA: GLSA Publications. Also in Signal to Syntax: Bootstrapping from Speech to Grammar in Early Acquisition, ed. James L. Morgan and Katherine Demuth, 187-214: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Because I have been head of department for some years, I have been teaching just two courses a year. At the undergraduate level, I have been teaching a course called Language and Diversity in the US. In recent years this course has focused on dialects, especially on the phonological features of regional dialects and on the syntactic and semantic features of African American English. At the graduate level, I have been able to teach courses that coincide closely with my research interests. In Spring 2004 I co-taught a seminar with Angelika Kratzer on Meaning and Intonation.