abstract

I am an Instructor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a PhD candidate in the Department of Linguistics at Stony Brook University. I am also affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Computational Science. My research interests include the phonetics-phonology interface, phonological representations, and computational/model-theoretic phonology. I am advised by Jeffrey Heinz. Before attending Stony Brook, I received my MA and BA in Linguistics from Michigan State University where I was advised by Karthik Durvasula. You can find a current copy of my CV here. If you would like to find out more information about me, please look around this website or send me an e-mail: sjnelson[at]illinois[dot]edu.

When I’m not doing linguistics, I like to {write,record,perform,listen to} music. I spent a decade of my life traveling around in a van with my friends performing music for strangers. My love for all things sound is ultimately what drew me to phonetics and phonology.


Research

Specific Interests

Language production and perception involve many factors. My research seeks to explain how these different factors interact. Primarily, I am interested in how the formal phonological system interacts with the sensory-motor system. I take the perspective that this is best answered by looking into the computational and representational properties of the transformations between continuous speech data and discrete symbolic mental units. In general, there are three questions to be considered:

  1. How do we best characterize the output function? (production)
  2. How do we best characterize the input function? (perception)
  3. How do we best characterize the mental representations that mediate between the two?

Because of the nature of the data, my research has involved both experimental and formal methods. I also work on model-theoretic phonology. In that domain I find myself consistently thinking about process interactions. Most of my abstracts contain some combination of the keywords: phonetics-phonology interface, computation, and model-theoretic phonology.

Publications

Journal Articles

Proceedings

  • Nelson, S. 2024. “Optionality and the Phonetics-Phonology Interface”. Proceedings of the 42nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics.

  • Nelson, S & Baković, E. 2024. “Underspecification without Underspecified Representations”. Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics, 7(1), 352-356.

  • Nelson, S. 2022. “A Model Theoretic Perspective on Phonological Feature Systems”. Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics, 5(1), 1-10.

  • Nelson, S & Heinz, J. 2022. “Incomplete Neutralization and the Blueprint Model of Production”. In Peter Jurgec, Liisa Duncan, Emily Elfner, Yoonjung Kang, Alexei Kochetov, Brittney K. O’Neill, Avery Ozburn, Keren Rice, Nathan Sanders, Jessamyn Schertz, Nate Shaftoe, and Lisa Sullivan (eds.), Proceedings of the 2021 Annual Meeting on Phonology. Washington, DC: Linguistic Society of America.

  • Pue, A. Sean & Nelson, S. 2018. “Marking Poetic Time: Building and Annotating a Hindi-Urdu Poetry Corpus for Computational Humanities Research.” Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Corpus-based Research in the Humanities (CRH-2), 171-180.

  • Durvasula, K. & Nelson, S. 2018. “Lexical Retuning Targets Features”. In Gallagher, Gillian, Gouskova, Maria, and Sora Yin (eds.), Proceedings of the 2017 Annual Meeting on Phonology. Washington, DC: Linguistic Society of America.

Manuscripts

  • Nelson, S. “The logic and typology of derived environment effects”.
  • Taherkhani, N., Nelson, S. & Heinz, J. “Vowel alternations as evidence for contrastive vowel features in Southern Tati: Takestani dialect”
  • Nelson, S. “On inferring linear order from non-linear gestural representations”.
  • Heinz, J. & Nelson, S. “The Past, Present, and Future of Model-Theoretic Phonology”.

Presentations and Posters


Teaching

I currently work as an Instructor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. My office is located in LCLB 4117. I have regularly scheduled office hours on Tuesdays from 3:30-5:00pm and Fridays from 1:00-2:30pm. If you are a student in one of my classes, please got my YouCanBookMe page to schedule a time to meet. If you are not my student, or if those time/meeting lengths do not work for you, please send me an e-mail. We can find a time to meet either remotely or in person.Below is a list of classes I have served as either a teaching assistant or main instructor for.

In 2023 I was a recipient of the Stony Brook President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student.

Univeristy of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Main Instructor

  • LING 401: Intro to General Phonetics
    • Fall 2024
  • LING 542: Phonology II
    • Fall 2024

Stony Brook Univeristy

Teaching Assistant

  • LIN 101: Introduction to Linguistics
    • Spring 2020
  • LIN 120: Language and Technology
    • Fall 2020
  • LIN 201: Phonetics
    • Fall 2019; Fall 2021; Spring 2022
  • LIN 235: Signed Languages & Deaf Communities
    • Spring 2024
  • LIN 301: Phonology
    • Spring 2021; Fall 2022; Fall 2023
  • LIN 538: Statistics for Linguistics
    • Spring 2023

Main Instructor

  • LIN 200: Language in the United States
  • LIN 350: Experimental Phonetics
  • LIN 405: Writing in Linguistics
  • LIN 522: Phonetics

Additional Instruction

Head Instructor

  • Stony Brook University Youth Camp in Computational Linguistics
    • Summer 2021; Summer 2022
  • Stony Brook Linguistics Department Statistics Minicourse
    • Summer 2023
  • New York Institute
    • Winter/Summer 2024 (Introduction to Mathematical Linguistics co-taught with Vinny Czarneski)

Volunteer

  • Stony Brook University NACLO Practice Session
    • Winter 2021; Winter 2022; Winter 2024
  • Stony Brook University Youth Camp in Computational Linguistics
    • Summer 2020; Summer 2023; Summer 2024
  • Stony Brook School Linguistics Minicourse
    • Winter 2022

Workshop Materials, Handouts, Tutorials, etc…