Faculty Associate
chandann[at]yorku.ca
Associate Professor
Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics, York University
Research Keywords:
Speech; language; speech perception; acoustic phonetics; historical sound change
Research Region(s):
South Asia
Research Diaspora(s):
South Asian Diaspora
I am an Associate Professor of Lingusitics in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics at York University. I also direct the Speech and Psycholinguistics Lab, where I work on projects with undergrads and graduate students from Linguistics, Psychology and Cognitive Science.
I’m interested in lots of aspects of speech, but mostly how infants and adults perceive speech, how our perception of speech interacts with our language, and how speech perception and acoustic phonetics contribute to historical sound change.
I started my career working on the problem of how our developing perception of speech acoustics (in infancy) is reflected in larger typological patterns observed in sound systems. I’ve also worked on how caregivers’ speech (in languages like Sri Lankan Tamil and Tagalog) to infants changes as infants develop. Another research program addresses how our perception of speech interacts with our lexicon.
I have a new SSHRC-funded project on lexical access in bilinguals. I’m also working on perceptual and phonological drivers of debuccalization in the history of Kannada (ಪ>ಹ). I’ve also recently collaborated on a project aimed at understanding the biomechanics and acoustics of Sygyt style of Tuvan throat singing.