We are delighted that the following projects have secured John Fell Funding

Methodologies for the study of glottalic consonants 

Dr Maida Percival and Professor Elinor Payne's project will develop innovative methodologies, combining the instrumental tools hosted by the Phonetics Laboratory in the LPP Faculty, to gain greater understanding of these speech sounds across languages. Employing multiple instruments, it will also gain insight into how to model the gestural timing and co-ordination of the speech sounds and correlate these with acoustic output. The project focuses on two under-studied languages: Oromo (Cushitic; Ethiopia with diaspora in the UK,) and Bora (Witotoan; Peru).  

Bilingual Word Production

Dr Isabella Fritz’s project researches the bilingual mental lexicon by investigating language production of complex words. Using electroencephalography (EEG), she will look to measure brain activity during the production planning process in highly proficient English language learners whose first language is German.

Eliciting language-specific signatures for expertise in the human brain   

Dr Hilary Wynne’s project will use behavioural techniques combined with EEG to examine how pilots employ contextual cues in sentences to process language in the field of aviation. By establishing how violations in restricted constructions affect the expert brain, this project aims to demonstrate why maintaining language standardisation in aviation is so important.