Recent dissertation topics

A small smaple of recent dissertation topics, broken down by subject:

Phonetics and Phonology

  • [r] production by Iraqi Arabic speakers
  • The intonation of Punjabi English
  • Variability of formant measurements
  • Quality-sensitive accent in Tokyo Japanese
  • Coordination of phonetic and visual resources in talk-in-interaction: A study of reported speech
  • Interlanguage syllable structure: Analysing vowel epenthesis produced by native Japanese speakers

Phonological Development in Childhood

  • An assessment of standardised and spontaneous language measures in late talkers
  • The role of pre-linguistic phonetic knowledge in lexical and phonological advance
  • Exploring the role of systematization in phonological development: A dynamic systems perspective

Psycholinguistics

  • The acquisition of any by Polish speakers learners of English: how the knowledge changes with proficiency
  • An assessment of standardised and spontaneous language measures in late talkers
  • Subjacency violations in second language acquisition: some evidence from Chinese Mandarin speakers of L2 English
  • L1 phonological transfer of Korean microprosody to L2 English
  • L2 acquisition of English binding anaphora by adult learners bilingual in Cantonese and Korean
  • Who did you ask me what to judge for? – The syntactic processing deficit in dyslexia and its impact on language performance

Sociolinguistics

  • A regional comparison of listener perception of speaker ethnicity via the non-verbal communication of laughter
  • The current social status of T-glottalling in York English
  • Codeswitching between Mandarin and Southern Min Dialect in Political Discourse in Taiwan
  • A study of mid-vowels in a Lorraine village
  • The variation in Early Modern English third person singular verbal inflection
  • An analysis of non-standard periphrastic 'do' in Somerset English.

Syntax and Semantics

  • The Tok Pisin noun phrase
  • Towards an investigation of socially-conditioned semantic variation
  • Definite article reduction in a religious community of practice
  • The definiteness effect in Chinese 'you'-existential constructions: A corpus based study
  • Topics and pronouns in the clausal left periphery in Old English
  • Scalar implicatures in polar (yes/no) questions
  • Quantification, alternative semantics and phases
  • The syntax and semantics of V2 – 'weil' in German 

MSc Forensic Speech Science

  • Electronic voice disguise: Witness anonymity
  • Lay-listener perceptions of fundamental frequency
  • Voice disguise: Cross-gender imitation in forensic cases
  • Verbal overshadowing and the effect on voice recognition: An online experiment
  • The effect of variability on the outcome of likelihood ratios
  • Assessing whether potential jurors hold unrealistic expectations about what is technically achievable in forensic speech analysis
  • Does listener age affect the ratings of guilt attributed to a suspect with a  standard or non-standard accent?
  • The effects of ANC technology in mobile phones on the speech signal
  • Of loss and gain: Investigating the effects of active noise cancellation technology on the GSM transmission of ambient noise
  • The effects of heroin on speech
  • The effects of video and voice recorders in cellular phones on vowel formants and fundamental frequency
  • Voice onset time & the realisation of /k/ in Cappadocia
  • Using /ai/ to discriminate between Derby speakers using formant dynamics in spontaneous speech
  • An overview of voice identification procedures
  • ‘Beware of the distance’:  evaluation of spectral measurements of synthetic vowels re-recorded at different distances
  • Investigating the consequences of alcohol intoxication on the acoustic properties of vowels
  • Language analysis for the determination of origin: native speakers vs. trained linguists
  • L2 style-shifting in the forensic context  by Yorkshire Asian English speakers
  • School matters: are students underperforming as earwitnesses?
  • Accent disguise: implications for forensic casework
  • Could the number of releases be used as a feature in forensic  speaker comparison?
  • Stylistic variation in West Yorkshire bilinguals: a forensic perspective
  • The effects of heroin on speech and voice quality
  • The phonetics of distress
  • Guilty accents? Effects of listener age and sex on the perceived guilt of a native and non-native suspect