Research Interests

Education

• Ph.D., linguistics, UCLA, 2005. Dissertation: Similarity in Phonology: Evidence from Reduplication and Loan Adaptation.
• M.A., linguistics, UCLA, 2000. Thesis: The location of epenthetic vowels with respect to consonant clusters: an auditory similarity account.
• B.A., linguistics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1997. Honors thesis: Word-final lengthening in American English.

Papers and presentations 

• Onset transfer in reduplication. Paper presented at the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, San Francisco, January 2002.
• Cluster-dependent epenthesis asymmetries. In UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics 7, Papers in Phonology 5, pp. 71-116, edited by Adam Albright and Taehong Cho.
• Onset clusters and Contiguity. Paper presented at the Southwestern Workshop on Optimality Theory, Los Angeles, April 2001. 
• Relative similarity judgments. Paper presented at the Symposium on the Role of Similarity in Phonology, Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, Washington DC, January 2001. 
• Perceived similarity and phonotactic wellformedness. Poster presented at the 7th Conference on Laboratory Phonology, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, June 2000. 
• Initial versus medial epenthesis: an auditory similarity account. Paper presented at the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, Chicago, January 2000. 
• The prothesis-epenthesis pattern: a perceptual account. Poster presented at The Role of Perception in Phonology, satellite meeting of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, San Francisco, July 1999. 
• Word-final lengthening in American English. Paper presented at the Spring Linguistics Colloquium, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1997. 

Teaching and research experience 

• Teaching assistant, Phonology I (Ling 120A, Bruce Hayes), Winter 2000 
• Teaching assistant, Phonological Theory I (Ling 200A, Bruce Hayes), Fall 1999 & Fall 1998 
• Research assistant to Patricia Keating, Summer 1998 

Awards 

• UCLA Dissertation Fellowship, 2001-2002
• UCLA Research Mentorship (with Donca Steriade), 2000-2001 
• National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, 1997-2000