About

Marie K. Huffman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Stony Brook University. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, obtained in 1989. Her research focuses on phonetics and phonology, exploring the fundamental aspects of speech sounds and their organization within language. Her work contributes to understanding the intricate relationship between phonetic realization and phonological patterns, advancing knowledge in these core areas of linguistics.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Speech recognition
• Mathematics
• Psychology
• Linguistics
• Physics
• Pure mathematics
• Astrophysics

Selected publications

• The relation between category compactness and L2 VOT learning

  The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Mathematics
  • Linguistics

  L1 and L2 category compactness have been reported to correlate with L2 vowel pronunciation accuracy in advanced intermediate learners (Kartushina and Frauenfelder, 2014). However, it is not clear whether category compactness is an effect of L2 learning, or whether it is an individual characteristic that might predict aspects of L2 learning. Holliday (2015) suggests that more variable VOT categories early in L2 learning may facilitate acquisition of new L2 VOT patterns. We tested relationships between L1 and L2 category compactness and L2 pronunciation progress for voiceless stops, in ten L1 English-L2 Spanish learners over the course of one semester of early Spanish courses. We found that lower L2 Spanish VOT correlated with higher voiceless VOT standard deviation at the end of the semester for all but the absolute beginners (R2 = 0.6256, F(1,5) = 37.75, p = 0.004). Thus, for early learners, as production improves, L2 categories may expand. In addition, L1 English voiceless stop VOT category compactness at beginning of term correlated with L2 Spanish VOT accuracy at end of term for all learners (R2 = 0.6798, F(1,9) = 17.0, p = 0.003), suggesting that L1 category compactness may reflect individual properties that influence progress in L2 learning.

  PublisherDOI

• The relation between L1 and L2 category compactness and L2 VOT learning

  Proceedings of meetings on acoustics · 2020 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Linguistics
  • Computer Science

  We test how the compactness of L1 and L2 sound categories may reflect individual differences in L2 sound acquisition. To this end, we examined the speech of ten L1 English-L2 Spanish learners over one semester in early Spanish courses. We analyzed VOT values of voiceless word-initial stops produced during word- list reading tasks in both languages. The results show that L1 English VOT compactness at the beginning of the semester correlated with L2 Spanish VOT accuracy at the end of the semester for all learners (R2 =.663, F(1,9)=15.7, p=.004). This finding indicates that L1 category compactness may reflect speaker characteristics, such as production precision, which influence progress in L2 learning. Moreover, we found that lower, more target-like L2 Spanish VOT correlated with higher L2 Spanish VOT standard deviation at the end of the semester for all learners but those with the most target-like pronunciation (R2 = .562, F(1,7) =7.71, p =.032). This suggests that speakers with relatively target-like L2 pronunciations may show more compact categories; yet, for early learners with non-target-like pronunciations, L2 categories may expand as production improves. In sum, L2 categories seem to reflect both a learner's personal production precision and their specific time-point in their L2 pronunciation development.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Development of L2 Spanish VOT before and after a brief pronunciation training session

  Journal of Second Language Pronunciation · 2019-12-03 · 8 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract We present a study of the development of L2 stop VOT (voice onset time) in lower-level English-speaking learners of Spanish over the course of a college semester. Participants were recorded six times in two-week intervals. Halfway through the semester, students received a brief pronunciation training session with practice and feedback. Overall, the learners did not lower their L2 VOTs in the first half of the study, before pronunciation training. Following training, however, they lowered their mean VOTs for Spanish voiceless stops significantly. A similar effect was not found for their mean VOTs of Spanish voiced stops, in line with prior work suggesting that prevoicing may be harder to acquire. Yet careful examination suggests that learners are increasing the frequency with which they use prevoicing in Spanish, suggesting this metric might inform future work on L2 Spanish pronunciation development. This work has implications for teaching and research in second language pronunciation.

  PublisherDOI

• Laboratory phonology 1

  2017-12-14 · 43 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  Laboratory phonology (LP) draws on theories and tools from various branches of the sciences to elucidate the linguistic, cognitive, and communicative nature of speech. This chapter introduces LP: its key questions, methodologies, and critical results. The history of LP can be roughly divided into two phases. The first phase encompasses LP's inception and early work revolving around the relationship between phonology and phonetics as understood by the two disciplines at the time. The second phase developed since the mid-90s as the questions were increasingly defined in terms of speech as cognitive science, embedded in a broadly defined communicative system. From its outset, the development of LP was very strongly driven by the work done on the prosodic structure of speech. One of the core questions in Intonational Phonology is the mapping of phonologically relevant tonal targets with segmental strings. Social-indexical variation poses some of the same challenges to phonological theory that language-specific phonetic detail in phoneme contrasts has presented.

  PublisherDOI

• Interaction of drift and distinctiveness in L1 English-L2 Japanese learners

  The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2017-05-01 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Dynamic L2 effects on L1 phonetics appear in experienced and novice second language learners, raising the question of what linguistic and cognitive factors determine their occurrence, degree, and direction (assimilatory versus dissimilatory). Unlike Chang (2012), our longitudinal data from voiceless stops in early L1 English:L2 Japanese learners show primarily dissimilatory increase in English VOTs, an effect found most strongly early in their first semester. Assimilatory L1 drift toward the lower VOTs of L2 Japanese may be disfavored because a decrease in English voiceless stop VOT could threaten the L1 contrast between long and short lag stops. Furthermore, dissimilatory VOT increase on voiceless stops allows English speakers to distinguish phonetically similar L1 and L2 voiceless stops (e.g., Flege and Eefting 1987). These two principles predict that our voiced stop data could show increased L1 prevoicing (an assimilatory effect that would not endanger the English voicing contrast), while also displaying non-identical prevoicing/short-lag values for L1 and L2 voiced stops (separating the languages, as for Huffman and Schuhmann’s (2016) English-Spanish learners). Overall, our data suggest that L1 changes in early L2 learning can be dissimilatory, and that phonetic properties of L1 and L2 contrasts affect how L1 values restructure during early L2 acquisition.

  PublisherDOI

• Assimilatory and dissimilatory L1 English vowel drift in early learners of Japanese

  The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2017-05-01 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author

  In contrast to predictions of the Speech Learning Model, Chang’s (2012) study of novice English-speaking learners of Korean finds no clear segment level assimilation between phonetically similar English and Korean vowels. The relative complexity of the Korean and English vowel systems may have made L2 to L1 vowel association inconsistent across speakers, leading to contradictory segment level effects. We examined vowels in L1 English:L2 Japanese learners, hypothesizing that the less dense vowel space in Japanese would simplify L1:L2 segment associations. Specifically, English [ɑ] and Japanese [a] should be associated by learners in a way that could lead to segment level L1 drift effects, allowing us to determine whether assimilatory L1 drift would occur in English for novice learners of Japanese, as Flege (1987, 1995) and Chang predict. Formant data for students in their first and second semester of Japanese instruction show mostly L1 assimilatory drift in F1, and some L1 dissimilation in F2, with most speakers making one change but not both. Overall, English [ɑ] variants stay within L1 norms, highlighting the importance of L1 phonetic repertoire in constraining L1 drift effects. Results will be compared to data for [i] and [u] to determine whether systemic level drift also occurs.

  PublisherDOI

• English focus prosody processing and production by Mandarin speakers

  The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2017-10-01

  articleCorresponding

  Our study compared the processing and production of English focus prosody by native speakers of English and Mandarin. Twenty-one Mandarin speakers living in the US and 21 English speakers participated in two tasks. In the processing task, participants responded to instructions that contained natural or unnatural contrastive prosody (Click on the purple sweater; Now click on the SCARLET sweater/Now click on the PURPLE jacket.) In the production task, participants guided an experimenter to place colored objects on a white board, with some contexts designed to elicit contrastive focus (Put the yellow arrow over the ORANGE arrow/yellow DIAMOND, please). All adjectives and nouns were bisyllabic trochees. The two groups differed in their realization of focus, with English speakers tending to align the pitch peak with the stressed syllable and Mandarin speakers with the right edge of the focused word. However, comparison of reaction times for the processing task indicated that both groups responded more quickly to instructions with natural than unnatural prosody, although English speakers’ response times were significantly faster in both conditions. We argue that although Mandarin speakers show Mandarin-like realization of focus in their production, they can nonetheless use the English prosodic patterns in their processing.

  PublisherDOI

• Articulatory Phonetics

  Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics · 2016-05-05 · 12 citations

  reference-entry1st authorCorresponding

  Articulatory phonetics is concerned with the physical mechanisms involved in producing spoken language. A fundamental goal of articulatory phonetics is to relate linguistic representations to articulator movements in real time and the consequent acoustic output that makes speech a medium for information transfer. Understanding the overall process requires an appreciation of the aerodynamic conditions necessary for sound production and the way that the various parts of the chest, neck, and head are used to produce speech. One descriptive goal of articulatory phonetics is the efficient and consistent description of the key articulatory properties that distinguish sounds used contrastively in language. There is fairly strong consensus in the field about the inventory of terms needed to achieve this goal. Despite this common, segmental, perspective, speech production is essentially dynamic in nature. Much remains to be learned about how the articulators are coordinated for production of individual sounds and how they are coordinated to produce sounds in sequence. Cutting across all of these issues is the broader question of which aspects of speech production are due to properties of the physical mechanism and which are the result of the nature of linguistic representations. A diversity of approaches is used to try to tease apart the physical and the linguistic contributions to the articulatory fabric of speech sounds in the world’s languages. A variety of instrumental techniques are currently available, and improvement in safe methods of tracking articulators in real time promises to soon bring major advances in our understanding of how speech is produced.

  PublisherDOI

• Effect of early L2 learning on L1 stop voicing

  Proceedings of meetings on acoustics · 2016-01-01 · 9 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper analyzes the voiced:voiceless stop contrast in Spanish and English in the early stages of L1 English-L2 Spanish learners' acquisition. Previous research suggests that corresponding L1 and L2 categories interact in early L2 acquisition, and that L2 learning can lead to assimilatory L1 drift (Chang 2012). Four speakers' pronunciations were analyzed, for English and Spanish, during the second and sixth week of a first-semester Spanish course. It was predicted that progress toward Spanish-like VOT values might be impacted by learners' need to keep sounds in the two languages distinct, which could limit or prevent assimilatory drift. At both time points, VOTs for Spanish and English voiceless stops show that speakers are in the process of differentiating the languages. Between Week 2 and 6, learners progress in L2 and, in one case, dissimilate L1. Only one speaker shows assimilatory L1 drift. For voiced stops, the languages are not as well differentiated, but most speakers reorganize their phonetic space between Week 2 and 6 to use fewer negative VOT values for English compared to Spanish. Overall, the data indicate that learners move toward differentiating their two languages early in L2 acquisition and that L1 contrasts can impact this differentiation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Phonetic adaptation in non-native spoken dialogue: Effects of priming and audience design

  Journal of Memory and Language · 2015-02-14 · 44 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Katharina S. Schuhmann

  Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg

  11 shared

• Ellen Broselow

  8 shared

• Cécile Fougeron

  Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie

  7 shared

• Susan E. Brennan

  6 shared

• Jiwon Hwang

  Stony Brook University

  5 shared

• Su-I Chen

  5 shared

• Amanda Stent

  Colby College

  4 shared

• Abigail C. Cohn

  Cornell University

  4 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1989

Awards & honors

• National Science Foundation grants