Professor Elinor Payne

I am Professor of Phonetics and Phonology in the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics at the University of Oxford, where I am a member of the Phonetics Lab.

Research

My overarching research interest is speech variation — how it arises, what shapes it and how speakers use it — and its relationship to phonology. Within this frame, I have worked on speech timing and other aspects of prosody, for a range of languages, including how infants acquire these. My current research investigates prosodic and phonetic variation and convergence arising from societal multilingualism and languages in contact, in particular: in Indian English (as spoken in India and the diaspora); in Cypriot varieties of Greek, Turkish and Arabic; and in Venetan dialect vs the regional Italian of the Veneto.

Teaching

I teach phonetics and phonology at undergraduate level, for Modern Languages and Linguistics (MLL); and Psychology, Philosophy and Linguistics (PPL), and at postgraduate levels for the MSt and MPhil in Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, and supervise doctoral students.

I am on Special Research Leave throughout 2021-2022, and on Sabbatical Leave throughout 2022-2023.

For more information about my research, teaching and publications, please visit my Phonetics Lab website  

I am also a Governing Body Fellow at St Hilda’s College and a Lecturer at Oriel College. 

Email address takes the form firstname.surname@phon.ox.ac.uk