Background

I am a phonologist focussing on phonological variation, the phonetics-phonology interface and language change. My research interests also include ultrasound tongue imaging, accents of English and quantitative research methodologies for linguistics. 

You can visit my personal page here.

Qualifications

PhD Linguistics, 2014

MA Linguistics, 2010

BA (Hons) English Language, 2009

(all University of Manchester)

Research

Research interests

• Phonological variation
• Diachronic phonology
• Language variation and change 
• Ultrasound tongue imaging 
• The phonetics-phonology interface 
• Laboratory Phonology 
• Mancunian English, Blackburn English (and other non-standard dialects) 
• The phonology-morphology interface

I am happy to supervise PhD projects in any of the areas listed above.

Ultrasound tongue imaging

My PhD thesis uses ultrasound to investigate /l/-darkening and vocalisation in varieties of English. I am interested in what synchronic patterns found in the realisations of these variants can tell us about their diachronic phonological life cycle.  I am interested in using ultrasound to observe other patterns in liquid consonants in other accents of English, as well as cross-linguistically.

Manchester English

My ongoing work on the Manchester accent (with Maciej Baranowski) has focussed on both consonantal and vocalic variation.  I'm interested in observing language variation and change and sociolinguistic variation from the perspective of phonological theory.

Blackburn English

I am currently working on a new project on the accent of Blackburn, Lancashire, focussing on rhoticity and vowel distinctions/mergers.

Teaching

My office hours this semester are available here

Undergraduate

SEL1027: Shaping Sounds and Syntax

SEL1028: The Building Blocks of Language (morphophonology component)

SEL3094: Accents of English

Postgraduate

SEL8117: Phonetics and Phonology

SEL8513: The Phonetics and Phonology of Accents

Publications

• Schleef E, Turton D. Sociophonetic variation of like in British dialects: effects of function, context and predictability. English Language and Linguistics 2018, 22(1), 35-75.
• Baranowski M, Turton D. The FOOT-STRUT vowels in Manchester: Evidence for the diachronic precursor to the split?. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 2018, 24(2), 2.
• Turton D. Categorical or gradient? An ultrasound investigation of /l/-darkening and vocalization in varieties of English. Laboratory Phonology 2017, 8(1), 1-31.
• Turton D. Synchronic stratum-specific rates of application reflect diachronic change: morphosyntactic conditioning of variation in English /l/-darkening. Papers in Historical Phonology 2016, 1, 130-165.
• Turton D. Determining categoricity in English /l/-darkening: A Principal Component Analysis of ultrasound spline data. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). 2015, Glasgow: University of Glasgow.
• Baranowksi M, Turton D. Manchester English. In: Hickey, R, ed. Researching Northern English. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2015, pp.293–316.
• Turton D. Some /l/s are darker than others: Accounting for variation in English /l/ with ultrasound tongue imaging. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 2014, 20(2), 21.