Conference Papers and Presentations

• Intlekofer, D.G., & Cutler, C. (2024, Nov. 7-9): Vowel Mergers in the Melting Pot: Parental Influence and Multilingualism in New York City English. NWAV52; “Celebrating Variation in Multilingual Contexts.”
• Intlekofer, D.G., Cutler, C., & Dong, J. (2024, Nov. 7-9): You Guys, Y’all, or Youse? Multilingual, Ethnic, and Generational Influence on 2PP in New York City English. NWAV52; “Celebrating Variation in Multilingual Contexts.”
• Cutler, C., & Intlekofer, D.G. (2023, Oct. 13-15): NYC Metro Area Survey: language attitudes and the low back merger. NWAV51; “Variation in the World’s Languages.”
• Bishop, J., & Intlekofer, D.G. (2020). Lower Working Memory Capacity is Associated with Shorter Prosodic Phrases: Implications for Speech Production Planning. Proceedings of  Speech Prosody 10, 191-195.
• Bishop, J., & Intlekofer, D.G. (2020).  Is the intermediate phrase the basic unit of speech production planning? Evidence from individual differences. Poster session presented at LabPhon17, the biennial conference of the Association for Laboratory Phonology, University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada. [abstract]
• Intlekofer, D.G. & Bishop, J. (2016). The role of prosody in conditioning Tagalog o/u variation. Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2016. In J. Barnes, A. Brugos, S. Shattuck-Hufnagel, & N. Veilleux (Eds.), Proceedings of Speech Prosody 8, 105–108. [poster]

PhD Program Examinations

• Dissertation: Social Factors in Variation and Change: A study of the Low Back Merger and Second-Person Plural Forms in New York City English: This dissertation investigates two sociolinguistic features of New York City English (NYCE)—the Low Back Merger (LBM) and second-person plural (2PP) variation—through production and usage-based data. The primary analysis draws from two datasets: production data from NYC-based social media influencers and acoustic data from the Corpus of New York City English (CoNYCE). A supplementary dataset—the NYC Metro Area Language Survey—provides self-reported insights into plural address forms. For the LBM, I aim to examine changes in the LOT and THOUGHT vowels across apparent time, ethnicity, and parental linguistic background, using formant measurements and Pillai scores to assess merger progression. For the 2PP analysis, I will explore how forms such as y’all, you guys, and youse function in digital performance and audience design, with attention to age, ethnicity, and borough. Together, I hope these analyses will offer a multifaceted view of variation in NYCE, connecting phonological and morphosyntactic change to broader questions of identity, multilingualism, and linguistic innovation in a complex urban setting. My goal is to contribute to variationist research by integrating social media discourse, ethnolinguistic variables, and both production and perception data into the study of contemporary NYC speech.
• 2nd Qualifying Exam: Prosodic conditioning: An instrumental production study of Tagalog u/o variation.  This study draws on data collected from native Tagalog speakers in the NYC area to instrumentally investigate an attested optionality between the Tagalog back vowels u and o occurring in unsuffixed and suffixed reduplicated words, e.g., haluhalo ~ halohalo (ice dessert) and haluhaluin (to mix something very well), respectively.  The main goals of this study were to 1) investigate the phonetic properties of u and o in Tagalog reduplicants and 2) test for phonetic correlates of prosodic phrase structure (primarily duration), as a measure of prosodic structure independent from the segmental alternation. This instrumental production study was motivated by Zuraw’s (2009) characterization of the u~o optionality based on a written corpus; she proposed that the optionality can be accounted for by lexically-sensitive prosodic structure assignment. The results of this study provided partial support for Zuraw’s proposal: frequency effects weren’t found to be a predictor of the vowel variant; however, there was evidence of differences between prosodic structure that could account for the optionality. The current study added to the existing literature on variation, which lacks in describing reduplicants; it also provided new instrumental production data for Tagalog in general, but specifically for the optionality between the back vowels in reduplicants. [paper] [slides]
• 1st Qualifying Exam: Tagalog /u/-lowering: An instrumental study of spontaneous speech. Abstract:  The standard characterization of Tagalog /u/-lowering as a phonological process triggered in the final syllable of a prosodic word fails to capture the entire picture of the domain in which lowering applies: problems arise, specifically, for cases in which optionality is apparently at issue. Kaufman (2007) argues for a prosodic structure for Tagalog hosts and clitics that utilizes recursion. Such a structure may provide the details needed to capture the variability observed in /u/-lowering. The current instrumental study, examining realizations of native Tagalog forms in spontaneous speech, tested predictions that follow from Kaufman’s hypothesized structure. The data provided evidence for the lowering process, but show that /u/ does not lower all the way to the mid vowel, contrary to the description in the literature. More crucially, the findings to some extent support the idea that previously unexplained variability has an account that depends on a two-way distinction among prosodic domains (although they are also not entirely incompatible with a three-way distinction, as per Kaufman’s analysis). The prosodic categories under investigation in the current study are the minimal prosodic word, the maximal prosodic word, and the phonological phrase. [paper]