Achievement

Trainee Ian Coffman, in collaboration with Prof. Brenda Rapp, conducted interdisciplinary research directed at understanding the relationship between phonological knowledge and motor planning processes in speech production. Following a neural infarct, patient VBR pronounces English words such as 'play' and 'spot' as 'pelay' and 'sspot,' respectively -- a pattern similar to how speakers of languages that lack initial consonant clusters such as 'tl-' and 'st-' adapt loanwords from languages that have them. This analogy was seriously pursued: phonological adaptation arises when certain structures are determined to be unpronounceable, which for VBR means that her phonological grammar has adapted itself to a motor speech impairment. Behavioral evidence in support of this hypothesis utilized experimental methods from cognitive neuropsychology and psycholinguistics. Additionally, a formal model of VBR's grammar was proposed, drawing on insights from theoretical phonology.