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Rachel Burdin

Program Coordinator, Linguistics
Associate Professor
Phone: (603) 862-1088
Office: Hamilton Smith Hall, Room 149m, Durham, NH 03824
Websites:
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Rachel Steindel Burdin’s research focuses on variation in intonation, particularly in Jewish languages and contact situations. Her dissertation, “Variation in the form and function of Jewish English intonation,” completed at The Ohio State University in summer 2016 and partially funded by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, examined variation in the production, perception and social meaning of Yiddish-influenced intonation. This research, and her work more broadly, makes use of a wide variety of techniques, including participant observation, acoustic analyses, perceptual experiments and media studies in order to get a fuller picture of the range and nature of variation in intonation. Her research also looks at intonational meaning more broadly, including work with her colleague Joseph Tyler on the interpretation of rising and plateau contours in listing contexts, and, with colleagues at Ohio State, on the prosodic marking of focus in different languages, with results published in articles in Language, Cognition and Neuroscience and Lingua. Her other research interests include the use of Yiddish in the construction of Jewish identities and places, particularly in areas with smaller Jewish populations, and Slavic/Yiddish contact.

Courses Taught

  • ENGL 719/819: Sociolinguistics Survey
  • ENGL 752: History of English Language
  • ENGL 779: Linguistic Field Methods
  • ENGL 852: History of English Language
  • ENGL/LING 605: Intermediate Linguistic Analys
  • ENGL/LING 719/819/719: Sociolinguistics Survey
  • ENGL/LING 728/828/728: Language and Gender
  • ENGL/LING 779/879/779: Linguistic Field Methods
  • ENGL/LING 793/893/793: Phonetics and Phonology
  • ENGL/LING 879/779: Linguistic Field Methods
  • INCO 590: Student Research Experience
  • INCO 790: Advanced Research Experience
  • LING 695: Senior Honors
  • LING 719: Sociolinguistics Survey

Education

  • Ph.D., Ohio State University
  • M.A., Linguistics, Ohio State University
  • B.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Research Interests

  • Intonation
  • Jewish English
  • Language contact
  • Phonetics
  • Prosody
  • Sociolinguistics
  • Variation and change
  • Yiddish

Selected Publications

  • Thorson, J. C., & Burdin, R. S. (2024). Phonetic implementation and the interpretation of downstepping in Mainstream US English. Journal of Phonetics, 105, 101340. doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2024.101340

  • Holliday, N., Burdin, R. S., & Reed, P. (2024). Can listeners differentiate varieties using prosodic information? Lect identification in a persona-matching task. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 9(1). doi:10.16995/glossa.10124

  • Clopper, C. G., Burdin, R. S., & Turnbull, R. (2023). Second dialect acquisition and phonetic vowel reduction in the American Midwest.. J. Phonetics, 99, 101243.

  • Burdin, R. S., Holliday, N. R., & Reed, P. E. (2022). American English pitch accents in variation: Pushing the boundaries of mainstream American English-ToBI conventions. JOURNAL OF PHONETICS, 94. doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2022.101163

  • Burdin, R. S. (2021). Hebrew, Yiddish and the creation of contesting Jewish places in Kazimierz. JOURNAL OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS, 25(1), 81-102. doi:10.1111/josl.12451

  • Burdin, R. S., & Tyler, J. (2018). Rises inform, and plateaus remind: Exploring the epistemic meanings of "list intonation" in American English. JOURNAL OF PRAGMATICS, 136, 97-114. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2018.08.013

  • Clopper, C. G., Turnbull, R., & Burdin, R. S. (2018). Assessing predictability effects in connected read speech. LINGUISTICS VANGUARD, 4. doi:10.1515/lingvan-2017-0044

  • Burdin, R. S. (2017). New Notes on the Rise-Fall Contour. Journal of Jewish Languages, 5(2), 145-173. doi:10.1163/22134638-05021184

  • Turnbull, R., Burdin, R. S., Clopper, C. G., & Tonhauser, J. (2015). Contextual predictability and the prosodic realisation of focus: a cross-linguistic comparison. LANGUAGE COGNITION AND NEUROSCIENCE, 30(9), 1061-1076. doi:10.1080/23273798.2015.1071856

  • Burdin, R. S., Phillips-Bourass, S., Turnbull, R., Yasavul, M., Clopper, C. G., & Tonhauser, J. (2015). Variation in the prosody of focus in head- and head/edge-prominence languages. LINGUA, 165, 254-276. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2014.10.001

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  • Most Cited Publications