Deepthi Gopal
Hello! I'm a linguist, interested in theoretical phonology and in the spatial and temporal dimensions of language change. I'm currently a teaching associate in Language Typology at the University of Cambridge; from 2017–2020, I was a postdoctoral researcher (also at Cambridge) on the ESRC-funded project Investigating the diffusion of morphosyntactic innovations using social media. I have a PhD and MA in Linguistics from the University of Manchester, and a BS in Physics from the California Institute of Technology.
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I'm interested in various phonological topics, broadly-defined (the formation of active classes, the development of phonological rules, sonorant phonology, local and long-distance consonant interactions, the formal structure of phonological representations) and in mathematical models of language change and dialect geography. Uniting these, one of my major current directions is the relationship between geographically-sensitive variation in the structure of related phonological rules and the diachronic pathway of phonologisation.
My PhD thesis, Similarity and representations in sonorant phonology (December 2018) was supervised by Yuni Kim and Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero. The title was a little misleading; the thesis deals with the nature of class formation and phonologisation in synchrony and diachrony, and with the role that parameters like similarity can play in the organisation of processes of analogical generalisation. There's also a subsidiary focus therein on the Turkic languages, in which I have a particular interest. Any day now, I will definitely get around to publishing the individual chapters as papers, but in the meantime you're welcome to read the whole thing, or get in touch if you want to know more.
I maintain an affiliation with the ESRC-funded project Investigating the diffusion of morphosyntactic innovations using social media (‘Tweetolectology’), on which I was the RA 2017–2020, with David Willis, Adrian Leemann, and Tam Blaxter. Our interest is in the spatial patterning of morphosyntactic variation in British English, Welsh, Norwegian-Swedish-Danish, and Turkish; we're building large, geographically-rich corpora of Twitter posts in those languages, and using them to answer questions about diachrony and diffusion.
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Geospatial distributions reflect rates of evolution of features of languagePhD dissertation, University of Manchester.The structural impact of morphological borrowing and convergenceMA dissertation, University of Manchester.Using post-measurement information in state discrimination
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Apparent-time and spatial diffusion in large social-media corporaNWAV 48, University of Oregon, Eugene.Big data for a small language: Mapping variation in Welsh on social mediaICLaVE 10, Fryske Academy, Leeuwarden.The rhotic in Jutland DanishFonologi i Norden 2019, University of Edinburgh.Geospatial distributions reflect rates of evolution of features of languageSpatial Patterns of Language Evolution (SPLEV), Zürich, Switzerland.Localising morphosyntactic variation in Welsh Twitter dataLocalising morphosyntactic variation in Welsh Twitter dataNWAV 47, New York University.Urbanisation and morphosyntactic variation in Twitter dataUrban Language Research · Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz.Localising morphosyntactic variation in Twitter data2018 Annual Meeting of the LAGB · University of Sheffield.Sonority and the typology of Turkic onset obstruentisation26th Manchester Phonology Meeting, University of Manchester.Sonority and the typology of Turkic onset obstruentisationOld World Conference in Phonology 15, University College London.Spatial distributions of linguistic features are determined by the interaction of
endogenous and exogenous dynamicsPerceptual boundaries and features in Chilean Spanish25th Manchester Phonology Meeting, University of Manchester.Modelling similarity-driven phonological generalisations4th Workshop on Sound Change, University of Edinburgh.Sonorant-conditioned mid vowel lowering in TurkishOld World Conference in Phonology 14, Düsseldorf.Aspiration 'dissimilation' in Tangkhul Naga prefixation2016 Annual Meeting on Phonology, University of Southern California.Aspiration 'dissimilation' in Tangkhul Naga prefixation2016 Annual Meeting of the LAGB · University of York.Sonorant-conditioned mid vowel lowering in Turkish24th Manchester Phonology Meeting, University of Manchester.Nasal-lateral assimilations as Agreement-by-CorrespondenceOld World Conference in Phonology 13, Budapest.Nasal-lateral interactions: typology and structure2015 Annual Meeting on Phonology, University of British Columbia.Markedness and syllable contact in Kazakh internal sandhi23rd Manchester Phonology Meeting, University of Manchester. -
University of CambridgeLi17 Language TypologyAs course coordinator, lecturer, supervisorUniversity of CambridgeLi11 Historical LinguisticsAs supervisorUniversity of CambridgeLi4 History and varieties of EnglishAs lecturer and supervisorUniversity of CambridgeLi13 History of EnglishAs supervisorUniversity of CambridgeLi4 History and varieties of EnglishAs supervisorUniversity of CambridgeLi11 Historical linguisticsAs lecturerUniversity of ManchesterLELA 20011 Phonology 1As TAUniversity of ManchesterLELA 20342 Experimental PhoneticsAs TAUniversity of ManchesterLELA 20281 The Logic of EnglishAs TA
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Technical: Python, R, Matlab, Praat analysis & scripting, GIS systems, HTML5/CSS. Languages: English, Swedish, Turkish, French, Spanish (in descending order of proficiency) — and very elementary Georgian.
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I was born in Darlington, England, in late 1991. I like string quartets, early-twentieth-century poetry, birdwatching, and very small cups of coffee. There is little actual phonetic realisation of stress in my name, but it's probably in there somewhere.
dg537 cam ac uk, punctuate as required
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