Nathan Sanders

Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Linguistics
Swarthmore College

Courses

Fall 2013:
LING 045: Phonetics and Phonology
LING 100: Research Seminar
LING 115: Linguistic Typology and Constructed Languages

Spring 2014:
LING 045: Phonetics and Phonology
LING 052: Historical and Comparative Linguistics

other courses:
LING 001: Introduction to Linguistics
LING 040: Semantics
LING 050: Syntax

Research Interests

I am interested in formal phonological theory; the interface between phonetics and phonology, such as the phonological role of acoustics and articulation; contrast loss and enhancement; naturalness; derivational opacity; ludlings (language games, like Pig Latin); Polish and Slavic phonology; historical phonology; the interface between morphology and phonology; and mathematical models of phonological and phonetic phenomena. I've most recently worked on the phonetics of American Sign Language, statistical measures of vowel harmony, and machine translation between Tuvan and English.

Education

SB in Mathematics, minor in Linguistics, MIT (1996)
MA and PhD in Linguistics, University of California, Santa Cruz (2000, 2003)

Selected Research

Ongoing. (With K. David Harrison, Rachel Killackey, Kathryn Montemurro, and Peter Nilsson) The Tuvan Machine Translation Project. [ website ].

2012. (With K. David Harrison) Discovering new vowel harmony patterns using a pairwise statistical model. Poster presented at the 20th Manchester Phonology Meeting, University of Manchester. [ PDF (handout/mini-paper) ] [ PDF (poster) ]

2011. Some aspects of ease of articulation in American Sign Language. Invited talk given at Stony Brook University on joint work with Donna Jo Napoli and Rebecca Wright. [ PDF ]

2009. (With Jaye Padgett) Exploring the role of production in predicting vowel inventories. Talk given at the 83rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. [ PDF ]

2009. (With Jacob Cerny and Christopher Paci) Towards a classification of the northern Berkshires dialect of American English. Poster presented at the 83rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. [ PDF ]

2008. (With Jaye Padgett) Articulatory parameters in a dispersion-focalization model of vowel systems. Talk given at the UC Santa Cruz Linguistics Alumni Conference. [ PDF (handout) ]

2008. (With Jaye Padgett) Predicting vowel inventories from a dispersion-focalization model: New results. Papers from the 44th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society. [ PDF ]

2006. Strong lexicon optimization. Talk given at Umass Phonology Group. [ PDF (handout) ]

2004. Opacity from contrast: Neutral segments in harmony systems. Talk given at the 12th Manchester Phonology Meeting, University of Manchester. [ PDF (handout) ]

2003. Opacity and sound change in the Polish lexicon. PhD dissertation, UCSC. [ abstract ] [ PDF (defense handout) ] [ PDF ]

2002. Dispersion in OT: Color contrast in Middle Polish nasal vowels. WCCFL 21 Proceedings. 415–428. [ PDF ]

2001. Preserving synchronic parallelism: Diachrony and opacity in Polish. CLS 37: The Main Session. Papers from the 37th Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society. 501–516. [ PDF ]

2000. Intra-representational correspondence and the realization of empty morphemes. Qualifying exam paper, UCSC. [ PDF ]

1999. Same-edge alignment with opposite-edge effects. Talk given at WCCFL 18. [ PDF (handout) ]

1999. Intra-representational correspondence and truncation. Paper given at Linguistics at Santa Cruz. [ PDF ]

1999. (With Kazutaka Kurisu) Infixal nominal reduplication in Mangarayi. Phonology at Santa Cruz 6. 47–56. [ PDF ]

Hobbies

Other Links