About

Rajiv Rao is the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor and Director of the Language Sciences Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on understanding the factors that influence how we sound when speaking a language, with particular emphasis on Spanish. He investigates aspects of prosody, including intonation, stress, and rhythm, as well as individual sounds, examining their effects on the sound system of Spanish in relation to syllables, words, phrases, pragmatic and syntactic conditions, and social variables. His dissertation concentrated on Peninsular Spanish, and his current research agenda centers on Spanish in the Americas. In addition to his research, Rao integrates his interests into teaching courses on general Spanish linguistics and Spanish phonetics and phonology at both graduate and undergraduate levels. His academic interests encompass Phonetics, Phonology, Prosody, Heritage Languages, Afro-Hispanic Linguistics, and Second Language Acquisition. He holds a PhD from the University of California, Davis, and is actively involved in advancing understanding of Spanish language variation and phonetic phenomena.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Linguistics
• Political Science
• Natural Language Processing
• History
• Philosophy
• Pedagogy
• Social psychology
• Communication
• Art

Selected publications

• Shaping language attitudes: An exploratory look at the impact of discussing bilingualism in the language classroom

  The Journal of Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (JSLAT) · 2025-11-07

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.This study explores the impact of a classroom intervention on second language (L2) Spanish learners’ attitudes towards bilingualism and language learning. Language attitudes are crucial to student success (Cummins, 2000), influence students’ decisions to continue language learning (Bartley, 1970) and can start developing as early as childhood (Dekker et al., 2021). While attitudes towards the language learning experience can improve through study abroad (Artamonova, 2023), recent research has also highlighted the potential of metalinguistic lessons to influence language attitudes within the L2 classroom setting (Lanvers et al., 2019). Given that knowledge about a topic will affect one’s attitudes (Artamonova, 2020), this study aims to assess whether a lesson about bilingualism can improve students’ language attitudes. Participants were 178 L1 English and L2 Spanish students enrolled in first through fourth level Spanish courses across four Midwestern universities. An experimental group received the lesson about bilingualism before completing a survey that assessed their language attitudes. A control group completed the survey before receiving the lesson. Results from a subset of data show that the experimental group exhibited more positive attitudes towards bilingualism and language learning than the control group in attitudinal questions that were explicitly addressed in the lesson. The class level of participants was another predictor of language attitudes, with lower-level students having fewer positive attitudes overall as compared to higher-level students. This study offers valuable insights into a realistic approach to improving attitudes within the classroom setting and inspires future research on metalinguistic lessons in language classes.

  PublisherDOI

• The impact of L2 Spanish learners’ attitudes toward Spanish sociophonetic variation on use and belonging

  Language Teaching · 2025-05-15

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• A Longitudinal Study of Spanish /ptk/: Context of Learning alongside Other Individual-Level Factors

  Hispania · 2025-06-01

  article

  Abstract: This longitudinal study tracked ten L1 English-speaking learners’ acquisition of Spanish voiceless stops /ptk/ by measuring their voice onset time (VOT) over an academic year in two distinct contexts of learning. Living in a Spanish-speaking dorm, participants in the experimental group experienced a domestic partial-immersion , in which there were increased opportunities for L2 Spanish input and practice beyond that of a Spanish language course. Speech production data recorded at eight points over two semesters revealed greater group-level improvement for all three phonemes for students living in the Spanish-speaking dorm, as compared to control speakers who did not reside at the dorm during the same period. In line with current L2 pronunciation research and given that individual trajectories were highly variable, we examine each participant’s developmental trajectory considering context of learning in combination with learners’ individual difference profiles (including factors of self-rated motivation and Spanish proficiency, among others). This work examines an alternative setting for language learning on university campuses and informs future related research on the myriad of factors playing a role in trajectories of L2 phonological development.

  PublisherDOI

• Bilingual Rhotic Production Patterns: A Generational Comparison of Spanish-English Bilingual Speakers in Canada

  2024-09-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2024-02-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This introduction to the volume provides background on common themes that appear across its chapters. First, it contextualizes the notions of heritage languages and heritage speakers before providing reasons why research on heritage sound systems has lagged behind work on other linguistic areas. It then offers an overview of what we have discovered to date about heritage sound systems, while also pointing out gaps and topics that merit further exploration. Motivated by the discussion in the first portion of this piece, the latter half covers the breadth, goals, and novel aspects of the current volume before providing brief summaries of the empirical studies carried out in each of its seventeen chapters.

  PublisherDOI

• A Comparative Analysis of Declarative Sentences in the Spontaneous Speech of Two Puerto Rican Communities

  Languages · 2024-03-08

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This paper applies the Autosegmental Metrical (AM) model of intonation phonology and the Spanish Tones and Break Indices (Sp_ToBI) annotation conventions to compare the intonational contours of declarative sentences in two varieties of Puerto Rican Spanish: (1) San Juan Spanish, spoken in the capital city of San Juan, and (2) Loíza Spanish, an Afro-Hispanic vernacular spoken in Loíza. The geographical proximity between these two municipalities entails constant contact within a shared linguistic space. However, speakers from San Juan perceive Loíza as a municipality that has its own peculiar way of speaking. The acoustic and phonological analysis was carried out with PRAAT to verify whether pitch accents coincide in the spontaneous speech of the two analyzed varieties. The data we examined contain an overall predominance of the bitonal pitch accents L*+H and L+<H* in San Juan Spanish, and L+H* in Loíza Spanish. Findings show both similarities and differences within the two speech communities, as well as with intonational patterns in other (Afro-)Hispanic varieties. These results provide new information on spontaneous declarative intonation in (Afro-)Puerto Rican Spanish by offering a new perspective on the origin of a set of the prosodic phenomena found in these two varieties.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The effects of a Spanish-language house on L2 phonology: A longitudinal study of Spanish /b d ɡ/

  Romanistik · 2024-01-01

  book-chapter

  El siguiente estudio contribuye con datos longitudinales procedentes de la producción de /b d ɡ/ en español por estudiantes de L1 inglés a lo largo de un año académico. El grupo de estudio está conformado por diez participantes que asistieron a una universidad del Medio Oeste de los EE. UU. De estos diez, cinco participantes vivían en una residencia hispanohablante (i.e., grupo experimental); los otros cinco no eran residentes de la residencia (i.e., grupo de control). Los datos fueron recogidos utilizando una frase portadora y analizados subsecuentemente para identificar los marcadores de /b d ɡ/ utilizando la intensidad relativa (IR). Se llevó a cabo un análisis estadístico con un modelo lineal de efectos mixtos.

  PublisherDOI

• A Preliminary Exploration of Declarative Intonation in the Chilean Diaspora of Sweden

  Languages · 2023-09-23 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Motivated by a growing body of research on heritage Spanish prosody, the current study uses the Sp_ToBi framework for the transcription of Spanish intonation to report trends in phonological targets of broad focus declaratives produced by heritage speakers of Chilean Spanish living in Stockholm, Sweden. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews from six participants belonging to the same social network including two Spanish-dominant first-generation immigrants and four Swedish-dominant second-generation speakers who were born and raised in Sweden and are heritage speakers of Spanish. The G1 participants are the primary source of Spanish input for the G2 speakers. Data were analyzed by identifying word- and phrase-level phonological targets and associating them with the appropriate pitch accent and boundary tones. Results show that the heritage Spanish declarative intonation patterns of the G2 speakers closely resemble those of the G1 speakers. These patterns are scrutinized in terms of the potential influence of Swedish and/or other varieties of Spanish. This analysis exhibits evidence of the importance of source input variety and cross-generational transmission of phonological targets in a heritage language as well as the potential contributions of multiple intonational systems in forming the phonological inventory of heritage speakers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The effects of context of learning on the perception of Spanish stress by Japanese speakers

  Journal of Speech Sciences · 2023-11-09

  articleOpen access

  This study explores the effect of context of learning on the perception of Spanish lexical stress. Spanish is considered a mixed system (with predictable and unpredictable stress) and a stress-accent language. Tokyo Japanese is a good example of a language without stress, but with pitch-accent. Two groups of Japanese speakers (20 in Bogotá and 25 in Japan) and a control group of 20 Spanish speakers completed a stress identification task, consisting of nine sets of 3 syllable accentual minimal triplets with each having an oxytone (e.g., nabidó), a paroxytone (e.g., nabido), and a proparoxytone (e.g., nábido). The results demonstrated that there was a significant effect of context of learning, with learners in Japan (88%) having a significantly (p=0.000) higher error rate than the learners in Colombia (60%). This study sheds highlights the effect of context of learning on L2 speech learning by demonstrating that immersion can enhance L2 stress perception.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Las consonantes vibrantes

  2022-06-07

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Donald N. Tuten

  16 shared

• Fernando Tejedo‐Herrero

  16 shared

• H. Robyn Clarke

  16 shared

• Sandro Sessarego

  The University of Texas at Austin

  11 shared

• Brianna Butera

  University of Memphis

  5 shared

• Jennifer Ploch

  Mercy Hospital Springfield

  4 shared

• Burke S. Richmond

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  4 shared

• Maichou Lor

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  4 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Spanish & Portuguese

  University of California Davis