Laurel Mackenzie
Biographic Data
| ID | 781051 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Laurel Mackenzie |
| GIVEN NAMES | Laurel |
| FAMILY NAME | Mackenzie |
| SIGNATURE | MACKENZIE L |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6427-4762 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 36 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Flipping the on/off switch
Traditionally, verbs like base have combined with the preposition on to express a meaning of derivation ( based on ). However, many writing in a US context have noticed the rapid rise of based off (of) alongside based on (Curzan 2013; Behrens 2014; Janda 2021). In this article, we document the relative increase of off in two English-language corpora in the verb base and six other verbs. The results show a clear real-time trend of increasing use o…
Bill Labov
Bill Labov passed away peacefully at home on December 17, 2024, with his wife and fellow Penn linguist Gillian Sankoff by his side. He leaves behind a legacy so large that it is hard to put into words. All three authors were fortunate enough to have had Bill as our PhD supervisor (Laurel: 2012, Meredith: 2014, Betsy: 2018). We feel that the many hours we spent in his presence and with his work have given us a good insight into who and how he was.…
The “good refugee” ideal
While “good refugee” stories have the potential to soften attitudes toward forcibly displaced people, there are hidden implications associated with this construct that must be considered. Based on 60 qualitative interviews with asylum seekers and refugees, this paper examines the ways forced migrants adopt and reproduce “good refugee” discourses that unintentionally position their belonging as contingent upon upholding narrowly defined, and arbit…
I’ve Always Spoke Like This, You See
Some English verbs use distinct forms for the preterite (i.e., simple past; e.g., I broke the door) and the past participle (e.g., I’ve broken the door). These verbs may variably show use of the preterite form in place of the participle (e.g., I’ve broke the door), which the authors call participle leveling. This article contributes the first detailed variationist study of participle leveling by investigating the phenomenon in perfect constructio…
Social role effects on English particle verb variation fail to replicate
The English particle verb alternation has been argued to be sensitive to the social role occupied by speakers on radio broadcasts; Kroch and Small (1978) argue that radio show hosts and in-studio guests’ greater sensitivity to prescriptive norms makes them more likely to use the joined variant of the alternation than listeners calling in to the show. This study analyzes 10,521 tokens of variable particle verbs from the RadioTalk Corpus (Beeferman…
Regularization in the face of variable input
From a young age, children go through a stage of leveling irregular forms. They are also known to probability-match variable phenomena. However, it is still unclear how children treat phenomena that are both irregular and variable. Does their tendency to overregularize take over, leading them to seize on the regular occurrences and produce them at an even higher rate than adults, or do children probability-match in these cases? In order to study …
New and old puzzles in the morphological conditioning of coronal stop deletion
This paper probes the well-documented morphological effect on coronal stop deletion (CSD, also called /t,d/-deletion), by which there is more deletion in monomorphemes like mist than in regular past tense forms like missed . We observe that there are, in principle, additional morphological distinctions that could be made within each category: for instance, the “regular past” category contains perfect and passive participles; the “monomorpheme” ca…
Assessing the accuracy of existing forced alignment software on varieties of British English
This paper presents an analysis of the performance and usability of automatic speech processing tools on six different varieties of English spoken in the British Isles. The tools used in the present study were developed for use with Mainstream American English, but we demonstrate that their forced alignment functionality nonetheless performs extremely well on a range of British varieties, encompassing both careful and casual speech. Where phone b…
Variable stem-final fricative voicing in American English plurals
This paper investigates analogical leveling in a small set of English nouns that have irregular plural forms. In these nouns, all of which end in a voiceless fricative, the fricative standardly voices in the plural (e.g., wolf – wol[v]es, path – pa[ð]s, house – hou[z]es ). Using audio data from three large spoken corpora of American English, I demonstrate that this stem-final fricative voicing is variable and conditioned by a number of factors, m…
What’s in a name? Teaching linguistics using onomastic data
What's in a name? Teaching linguistics using onomastic data
This article describes how students can be introduced to the basics of linguistic analysis using personal, product, and place names as data. I outline several areas of linguistics that can be effectively taught at an introductory level through name data and provide examples of accompanying in-class and take-home exercises. Throughout the article, I demonstrate that the everyday familiarity of names and the ready availability of name data combine …
Frequency effects over the lifespan
This paper uses a small-scale case study of the speech of a single speaker at two points in time to investigate the question of whether and how speakers’ mental representations change over their lives. Specifically, I test two predictions of usage-based models of phonological representation: that individuals surrounded by a changing community will show the community change in their own production, and that this individual-level change will show a…
The dynamics of variation in individuals
This paper examines the factors conditioning the production of linguistic variables in real time by individual speakers: what we term the dynamics of variation in individuals . We propose a framework that recognizes three types of factors conditioning variation: sociostylistic, internal linguistic, and psychophysiological. We develop two main points against this background. The first is that sequences of variants produced by individuals display s…
Rites of passage
This article is about resettled Afghan Hazaras in Australia, many of whom are currently undergoing a complex process of transition (from transience into a more stable position) for the first time in their lives. Despite their permanent residency status, we show how resettlement can be a challenging transitional experience. For these new migrants, we argue that developing a sense of belonging during the transition period is a critical rite of pass…
Variation in English auxiliary realization
English auxiliary contraction has received much attention in the linguistic literature, but our knowledge of this variable has remained limited due to the absence of a thorough corpus study. This paper examines contraction of six auxiliaries in two corpora, considering three distinct phonological shapes in which they occur and the implications for an analysis of the grammatical processes that underlie the surface alternation in form. I argue that…
The “good refugee” ideal
While “good refugee” stories have the potential to soften attitudes toward forcibly displaced people, there are hidden implications associated with this construct that must be considered. Based on 60 qualitative interviews with asylum seekers and refugees, this paper examines the ways forced migrants adopt and reproduce “good refugee” discourses that unintentionally position their belonging as contingent upon upholding narrowly defined, and arbit…
The dynamics of variation in individuals
This paper examines the factors conditioning the production of linguistic variables in real time by individual speakers: what we term the dynamics of variation in individuals . We propose a framework that recognizes three types of factors conditioning variation: sociostylistic, internal linguistic, and psychophysiological. We develop two main points against this background. The first is that sequences of variants produced by individuals display s…
Rites of passage
This article is about resettled Afghan Hazaras in Australia, many of whom are currently undergoing a complex process of transition (from transience into a more stable position) for the first time in their lives. Despite their permanent residency status, we show how resettlement can be a challenging transitional experience. For these new migrants, we argue that developing a sense of belonging during the transition period is a critical rite of pass…
Variation in English auxiliary realization
English auxiliary contraction has received much attention in the linguistic literature, but our knowledge of this variable has remained limited due to the absence of a thorough corpus study. This paper examines contraction of six auxiliaries in two corpora, considering three distinct phonological shapes in which they occur and the implications for an analysis of the grammatical processes that underlie the surface alternation in form. I argue that…
New and old puzzles in the morphological conditioning of coronal stop deletion
This paper probes the well-documented morphological effect on coronal stop deletion (CSD, also called /t,d/-deletion), by which there is more deletion in monomorphemes like mist than in regular past tense forms like missed . We observe that there are, in principle, additional morphological distinctions that could be made within each category: for instance, the “regular past” category contains perfect and passive participles; the “monomorpheme” ca…
I’ve Always Spoke Like This, You See
Some English verbs use distinct forms for the preterite (i.e., simple past; e.g., I broke the door) and the past participle (e.g., I’ve broken the door). These verbs may variably show use of the preterite form in place of the participle (e.g., I’ve broke the door), which the authors call participle leveling. This article contributes the first detailed variationist study of participle leveling by investigating the phenomenon in perfect constructio…
Bill Labov
Bill Labov passed away peacefully at home on December 17, 2024, with his wife and fellow Penn linguist Gillian Sankoff by his side. He leaves behind a legacy so large that it is hard to put into words. All three authors were fortunate enough to have had Bill as our PhD supervisor (Laurel: 2012, Meredith: 2014, Betsy: 2018). We feel that the many hours we spent in his presence and with his work have given us a good insight into who and how he was.…
What's in a name? Teaching linguistics using onomastic data
This article describes how students can be introduced to the basics of linguistic analysis using personal, product, and place names as data. I outline several areas of linguistics that can be effectively taught at an introductory level through name data and provide examples of accompanying in-class and take-home exercises. Throughout the article, I demonstrate that the everyday familiarity of names and the ready availability of name data combine …
Variation in English auxiliary realization
English auxiliary contraction has received much attention in the linguistic literature, but our knowledge of this variable has remained limited due to the absence of a thorough corpus study. This paper examines contraction of six auxiliaries in two corpora, considering three distinct phonological shapes in which they occur and the implications for an analysis of the grammatical processes that underlie the surface alternation in form. I argue that…
Rites of passage
This article is about resettled Afghan Hazaras in Australia, many of whom are currently undergoing a complex process of transition (from transience into a more stable position) for the first time in their lives. Despite their permanent residency status, we show how resettlement can be a challenging transitional experience. For these new migrants, we argue that developing a sense of belonging during the transition period is a critical rite of pass…
The dynamics of variation in individuals
This paper examines the factors conditioning the production of linguistic variables in real time by individual speakers: what we term the dynamics of variation in individuals . We propose a framework that recognizes three types of factors conditioning variation: sociostylistic, internal linguistic, and psychophysiological. We develop two main points against this background. The first is that sequences of variants produced by individuals display s…
Frequency effects over the lifespan
This paper uses a small-scale case study of the speech of a single speaker at two points in time to investigate the question of whether and how speakers’ mental representations change over their lives. Specifically, I test two predictions of usage-based models of phonological representation: that individuals surrounded by a changing community will show the community change in their own production, and that this individual-level change will show a…
Variable stem-final fricative voicing in American English plurals
This paper investigates analogical leveling in a small set of English nouns that have irregular plural forms. In these nouns, all of which end in a voiceless fricative, the fricative standardly voices in the plural (e.g., wolf – wol[v]es, path – pa[ð]s, house – hou[z]es ). Using audio data from three large spoken corpora of American English, I demonstrate that this stem-final fricative voicing is variable and conditioned by a number of factors, m…
What’s in a name? Teaching linguistics using onomastic data
What's in a name? Teaching linguistics using onomastic data
This article describes how students can be introduced to the basics of linguistic analysis using personal, product, and place names as data. I outline several areas of linguistics that can be effectively taught at an introductory level through name data and provide examples of accompanying in-class and take-home exercises. Throughout the article, I demonstrate that the everyday familiarity of names and the ready availability of name data combine …
Assessing the accuracy of existing forced alignment software on varieties of British English
This paper presents an analysis of the performance and usability of automatic speech processing tools on six different varieties of English spoken in the British Isles. The tools used in the present study were developed for use with Mainstream American English, but we demonstrate that their forced alignment functionality nonetheless performs extremely well on a range of British varieties, encompassing both careful and casual speech. Where phone b…
New and old puzzles in the morphological conditioning of coronal stop deletion
This paper probes the well-documented morphological effect on coronal stop deletion (CSD, also called /t,d/-deletion), by which there is more deletion in monomorphemes like mist than in regular past tense forms like missed . We observe that there are, in principle, additional morphological distinctions that could be made within each category: for instance, the “regular past” category contains perfect and passive participles; the “monomorpheme” ca…
Regularization in the face of variable input
From a young age, children go through a stage of leveling irregular forms. They are also known to probability-match variable phenomena. However, it is still unclear how children treat phenomena that are both irregular and variable. Does their tendency to overregularize take over, leading them to seize on the regular occurrences and produce them at an even higher rate than adults, or do children probability-match in these cases? In order to study …
Social role effects on English particle verb variation fail to replicate
The English particle verb alternation has been argued to be sensitive to the social role occupied by speakers on radio broadcasts; Kroch and Small (1978) argue that radio show hosts and in-studio guests’ greater sensitivity to prescriptive norms makes them more likely to use the joined variant of the alternation than listeners calling in to the show. This study analyzes 10,521 tokens of variable particle verbs from the RadioTalk Corpus (Beeferman…
The “good refugee” ideal
While “good refugee” stories have the potential to soften attitudes toward forcibly displaced people, there are hidden implications associated with this construct that must be considered. Based on 60 qualitative interviews with asylum seekers and refugees, this paper examines the ways forced migrants adopt and reproduce “good refugee” discourses that unintentionally position their belonging as contingent upon upholding narrowly defined, and arbit…
I’ve Always Spoke Like This, You See
Some English verbs use distinct forms for the preterite (i.e., simple past; e.g., I broke the door) and the past participle (e.g., I’ve broken the door). These verbs may variably show use of the preterite form in place of the participle (e.g., I’ve broke the door), which the authors call participle leveling. This article contributes the first detailed variationist study of participle leveling by investigating the phenomenon in perfect constructio…
Flipping the on/off switch
Traditionally, verbs like base have combined with the preposition on to express a meaning of derivation ( based on ). However, many writing in a US context have noticed the rapid rise of based off (of) alongside based on (Curzan 2013; Behrens 2014; Janda 2021). In this article, we document the relative increase of off in two English-language corpora in the verb base and six other verbs. The results show a clear real-time trend of increasing use o…
Bill Labov
Bill Labov passed away peacefully at home on December 17, 2024, with his wife and fellow Penn linguist Gillian Sankoff by his side. He leaves behind a legacy so large that it is hard to put into words. All three authors were fortunate enough to have had Bill as our PhD supervisor (Laurel: 2012, Meredith: 2014, Betsy: 2018). We feel that the many hours we spent in his presence and with his work have given us a good insight into who and how he was.…
Linguistics (13 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (11 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (8 works) · Mathematics (7 works) · History (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · History (5 works)