Staff Profile

Internal roles

Co-Convenor, Cross-Faculty Phonetics and Phonology Research Group

External roles

Editorial board member, Glossa Psycholinguistics

Summary CV

Senior Lecturer in Phonetics and Phonology, Newcastle University (2023-Present)

Lecturer in Phonetics and Phonology, Newcastle University (2020-2023)

Assistant Professor in Phonology, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (2017-2020)

Postdoctoral Researcher, Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique (2015-2017)

PhD in Linguistics, Ohio State University (2015)

MA (hons) in English Language and Linguistics, University of Edinburgh (2009)

I am interested in the phonological processes and representations of the mental lexicon and as such my research sits at the intersection between phonetics, phonology, and psycholinguistics. In my PhD dissertation, I investigated the cognitive source of frequency and predictability effects in spoken language. More generally, I am interested in the ways that frequency, predictability, and other usage-based factors influence linguistic sound structures. My current research examines how factors of lexical organization, such as phonological neighborhood density, influence speech production and perception. Additionally, I maintain an active research agenda in intonation and prosody, investigating the relationships between predictability, context, and the phonetics of prosodic contrasts.

I use a wide variety of research paradigms, drawing from experimental phonetics, cognitive psychology, and theoretical phonology. There is no “one size fits all” solution to research in the language sciences. This methodological pluralism entails a cross-linguistic approach, which is vital for the advancement of the field, particularly when a key finding is based on data from a small number of languages. Several of my projects involve cross-linguistic studies and diverse methodological approaches.

2023/2024 teaching:

• SEL2000 Phonological theory
• SEL2236 It's not what you say, it's how you say it: Prosody and intonation
• SEL8154 Issues in phonological theory I
• SEL8698 Melody in language

2022/2023 teaching:

• SEL2000 Phonological theory
• SEL8154 Issues in phonological theory I

2021/2022 teaching:

• SEL1027 Introduction to the Study of Language 1: Syntax and Phonology
• SEL2000 Phonological theory
• SEL8117 Phonetics and phonology
• SEL8154 Issues in phonological theory I

2020/2021 teaching:

• SEL2000 Phonological theory
• SEL3006 Topics in phonological theory
• SEL8154 Issues in phonological theory I
• SEL8205 Issues in phonological theory II

• Articles

  • Clopper CG, Burdin RS, Turnbull R. Second dialect acquisition and phonetic vowel reduction in the American Midwest. Journal of Phonetics 2023, 99, 101243.
  • Coretta S, et al, Zhang C, Alotaibi NE, Halfacre C, Kelly NE, Turnbull R, McConnellogue C-AM. Multidimensional Signals and Analytic Flexibility: Estimating Degrees of Freedom in Human-Speech Analyses. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science 2023, 6(3), 1–29.
  • Melnik-Leroy GA, Turnbull R, Peperkamp S. On the relationship between perception and production of L2 sounds: Evidence from Anglophones’ processing of the French /u/–/y/ contrast. Second Language Research 2022, 38(3), 581-605.
  • Clopper CG, Burdin RS, Turnbull R. Variation in /u/ fronting in the American Midwest. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 2019, 146(1), 233-244.
  • Turnbull R. Listener-oriented phonetic reduction and theory of mind. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 2019, 34(6), 747-768.
  • Turnbull R. Patterns of probabilistic segment deletion/reduction in English and Japanese. Linguistics Vanguard 2018, 4(s2), 20170033.
  • Turnbull R, Seyfarth S, Hume E, Jaeger TF. Nasal place assimilation trades off inferrability of both target and trigger words. Laboratory Phonology 2018, 9(1), 15.
  • Clopper CG, Turnbull R, Burdin RS. Assessing predictability effects in connected read speech. Linguistics Vanguard 2018, 4(S2).
  • Turnbull R. The Role of Predictability in Intonational Variability. Language and Speech 2017, 60(1), 123-153.
  • Turnbull R. The phonetics and phonology of lexical prosody in San Jerónimo Acazulco Otomi. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 2017, 47(3), 251-282.
  • Turnbull R, Peperkamp S. The asymmetric contribution of consonants and vowels to phonological similarity: Evidence from lexical priming. The Mental Lexicon 2017, 12(3), 404-430.
  • Turnbull R, Royer AJ, Ito K, Speer SR. Prominence perception is dependent on phonology, semantics, and awareness of discourse. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 2017, 32(8), 1017–1033.
  • Holliday JJ, Turnbull R, Eychenne J. K-SPAN: A lexical database of Korean surface phonetic forms and phonological neighborhood density statistics. Behavior Research Methods 2017, 49(5), 1939-1950.
  • Ito K, Turnbull R, Speer SR. Allophonic tunes of contrast: Lab and spontaneous speech lead to equivalent fixation responses in museum visitors. Laboratory Phonology 2017, 81(1), 1-29.
  • Wiener S, Turnbull R. Constraints of Tones, Vowels and Consonants on Lexical Selection in Mandarin Chinese. Language and Speech 2016, 59(1), 59–82.
  • Burdin RS, Phillips-Bourass S, Turnbull R, Yasavul M, Clopper CG, Tonhauser J. Variation in the prosody of focus in head- and head/edge-prominence languages.. Lingua 2015, 165(B), 254-276.
  • Turnbull R, Burdin RS, Clopper CG, Tonhauser J. Contextual predictability and the prosodic realisation of focus: a cross-linguistic comparison. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 2015, 30(9), 1061-1076.
  • Ladd DR, Turnbull R, Browne C, Caldwell-Harris C, Ganushchak L, Swoboda K, Woodfield V, Dediu D. Patterns of individual differences in the perception of missing-fundamental tones. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 2013, 39(5), 1386-1397.
  • Turnbull R, Clopper CG. Effects of semantic predictability and dialect variation on vowel production in clear and plain lab speech. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics 2013, 19, 060116.

• Book Chapters

  • Turnbull R. Managing Phonological Data in a Perception Experiment. In: Berez-Kroeker AL; McDonnell B; Koller E; Collister LB, ed. The Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2022, pp.557–564.
  • Clopper CG, Turnbull R. Exploring variation in phonetic reduction: Linguistic, social, and cognitive factors. In: Cangemi F; Clayards M; Niebuhr O; Schuppler B; Zellers M, ed. Rethinking Reduction: Interdisciplinary perspectives on conditions, mechanisms, and domains for phonetic variation. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018, pp.25-72.
  • Turnbull R, Peperkamp S. What governs a language’s lexicon? Determining the organizing principles of phonological neighbourhood networks. In: Cherifi H; Gaito S; Quattrociocchi W; Sala A, ed. Complex Networks & Their Applications V. Springer, Cham, 2017, pp.83–94.
  • Pharao Hansen M, Hernández-Green N, Turnbull R, Boeg Thomsen D. Life histories, language attitudes and linguistic variation: Navigating the micro-politics of language revitalization in an Otomí community in Mexico. In: Pérez-Báez, G., Rogers, C., & Rosés Labrada, J. E, ed. Language Documentation and Revitalization: Latin American Contexts. de Gruyter, 2016. In Preparation.

• Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstracts)

  • Peperkamp S, Antoine V, Turnbull R. Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Quantifying French liaison-induced homophony. In: 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Cognitive Diversity, CogSci 2022. 2022, Toronto: The Cognitive Science Society.
  • Turnbull R. Graph-theoretic Properties of the Class of Phonological Neighbourhood Networks. In: Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics. 2021, Online: Association for Computational Linguistics.
  • Turnbull R, Peperkamp S. Across-language priming in bilinguals: does English bet prime French bête?. In: 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. 2019, Melbourne, Australia: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc.
  • McDonnell B, Turnbull R. Neural network modeling of prosodic prominence in Besemah (Malayic, Indonesia). In: 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody. 2018, Poznań, Poland: International Speech Communication Association.
  • Turnbull R, Peperkamp S. What governs a language's lexicon? Determining the organizing principles of phonological neighbourhood networks. In: 5th International Workshop on Complex Networks and their Applications. 2017, Milan: Springer.
  • Schatz T, Turnbull R, Bach F, Dupoux E. A quantitative measure of the impact of coarticulation on phone discriminability. In: Interspeech 2017. 2017, Stockholm, Sweden: International Speech Communication Association.
  • Turnbull R. Patterns of individual differences in reduction: Implications for listener-oriented theories. In: 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. 2015, Glasgow, UK: International Phonetic Association.
  • Holliday JJ, Turnbull R. Effects of phonological neighborhood density on word production in Korean. In: 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. 2015, Glasgow, UK: International Phonetic Association.
  • Turnbull R, Royer AJ, Ito K, Speer SR. Prominence perception in and out of context. In: Speech Prosody. 2014, Dublin: International Speech Communication Association.
  • Burdin RS, Turnbull R, Clopper CG. Interactions among lexical and discourse characteristics in vowel production. In: 168th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. 2014, Indianapolis, Indiana: American Institute of Physics.

• Edited Book

  • Crocker MW, Jäger G, Kuperberg G, Rohde H, Teich E, Turnbull R, ed. Rational Approaches in Language Science. Lausanne: Frontiers Media SA, 2022.

• Review

  • Turnbull R. Robert Kennedy (2017). Phonology: a coursebook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. xii + 364. Phonology 2018, 35(3), 530-536.