Edinburgh Research Explorer

Dr James Kirby

Reader

Profile photo
Phone: 0131 650 3952

Willingness to take PhD students: Yes

Research Interests

Phonetics, phonology, language evolution and change, tone and register, language and music, languages of Southeast Asia

Administrative Roles

Programme Director, MSc Phonetics

Research Advisor, Linguistics and English Language

 

Visiting and Research Positions

Instructor, LSA Linguistic Institute, Chicago, July 2015

Invited Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies, LMU München, May-July 2014

Instructor, LSA Linguistic Institute, Ann Arbor, July 2013

Invited lecturer, Vietnam National University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Hanoi, July-August 2012

Senior Research Fellow, Center for Khmer Studies, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 2011

Invited Researcher, MICA Center, Hanoi University of Technology, 2008

Invited Contributor, SEALANG Library (http://sealang.net/library)

Teaching

LEL2B: Acoustic Phonetics and Empirical Methods

LEL2D: Cross Linguistic Variation: Limits and Theories

Phonetics and Laboratory Phonology

Special Topics in Phonetics

Computational Phonology

MSc Introduction to Phonology and Phonetics

Computational Approaches to Sound Change

Qualifications

PhD Linguistics, University of Chicago, 2010
MA Linguistics, University of California-San Diego, 2005
BA Linguistics & Germanic Linguistics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2000

Websites

School webpage

Personal webpage

Research outputs

  1. Effects of obstruent voicing on vowel F0: Implications for laryngeal realism

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article

  2. Inducing a lexicon of sociolinguistic variables from code-mixed text

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

  3. Onset pitch perturbations and the cross-linguistic implementation of voicing: Evidence from tonal and non-tonal languages

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article

View all (42) »

Research activities & awards

  1. Imitation, convergence and sound change: commentary

    Activity: Academic talk or presentation types › Invited talk

  2. 29th Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society

    Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in conference

  3. 29th Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society

    Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in conference

View all (133) »

Research projects

  1. Laura Arnold: Synchronic and diachronic investigations in Raja Ampat-South Halmahera, a little-known subbranch of Austronesian

    Project: Research

  2. The emergence and evolution of linguistic tone

    Project: Research

  3. From voicing to register: the evolution of a sound change in Southeast Asia

    Project: Research

View all (10) »

Research press coverage

  1. Songs in Tonal Languages

    Press/Media: Expert Comment

  2. Dr James Kirby explains the process by which lyrics are set to music in tone languages such as Thai and Vietnamese

    Press/Media: Research

View all (2) »

Latest datasets

  1. Acoustic transitions in Khmer word-initial clusters: audio recordings

    Dataset

  2. Onset pitch perturbations and the cross-linguistic implementation of voicing: supplementary materials

    Dataset

  3. On the r>h shift in Kiên Giang Khmer: supplementary materials

    Dataset

View all (9) »

ID: 164601