Overview
The Community research cluster focuses on how patterns of language variation are given value by groups of individuals and how those patterns and values change over time due to internal and external factors. Researchers develop critical skills in sociolinguistic interviewing, speech transcription, linguistic-variable extraction, and statistical analysis.
Active Workstreams
- Variation and change in the Puerto Rican English in Philadelphia (PREP) Corpus, including EY-raising, sex-differentiated OH-lowering, and relationships between vowel production and speaker identity.
- Extending the PREP corpus through alignment and vowel extraction across the fuller dataset, while expanding public-facing transcript availability.
Methods
- Naturalistic speech-data collection through sociolinguistic interviews.
- Transcription and preparation of public-facing corpus materials.
- Extraction and acoustic analysis of targeted linguistic variables.
- Statistical analysis of linguistic, social, and speaker-level predictors.
Recent and Current Outputs
- 2024: Patchell, A., and Berry, G.M. "TH-Stopping in Philadelphia Puerto Rican English." Language Variation and Change. DOI: 10.1017/S0954394524000012.
- In progress: Analyses of EY-raising and sex-differentiated OH-lowering in Philadelphia Puerto Rican English.
- In progress: Alignment and vowel extraction across the expanded PREP dataset.
Project Snapshot
- Cluster: Community
- Primary resource: Puerto Rican English in Philadelphia (PREP) Corpus
- Current variables: EY-raising, OH-lowering, and vowel-production patterns
- Geographic focus: Philadelphia
- Training focus: interviewing, transcription, variable extraction, and statistical analysis
Last Updated
September 2026