About

Akinbiyi Akinlabi is a professor in the Department of Linguistics at Rutgers University. His research interests include phonology, morphology, Optimality Theory, and West African linguistics. He is involved in various research groups such as the Morphology Reading Group, Phonology and Phonetics Research Group (PhonX), Semantics, U-Name-It at Rutgers (SURGE), and Syntactic Theory @ Rutgers (ST@R). His academic work focuses on these areas, contributing to the understanding of linguistic structures and theories related to West African languages and phonological and morphological processes.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Linguistics
• Sociology
• Speech recognition
• Philosophy
• Artificial Intelligence
• History
• Anthropology
• Mathematics
• Library science
• Psychology
• Physics
• Media studies

Selected publications

• Cross Consonantal Vowel Assimilation in Yoruba: A Review

  2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Linguistics
  • Speech recognition
  PublisherDOI

• On five-level tone contrasts: the case of Dan-Gblewo

  Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus · 2022 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Linguistics

  The central goal of this research is to propose that no language utilizes more than four level pitches contrastively (from low to high). The central question is whether a five- or six-way contrast represents five or six level tones, or a combination of level tones, contour tones, voice quality, and syllable type. We argue that Dan-Gblewo operates a four-level-plus-creaky-voice system rather than a five-level tone system. We show that Dan must be analysed as such from the empirical, experimental, and theoretical perspectives.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Celebrating 50 years of ACAL: Selected papers from the 50th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

  2021-10-19 · 12 citations

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The papers in this volume were presented at the 50th Annual Conference on African Linguistics held at the University of British Columbia in 2019. The contributions span a range of theoretical topics as well as topics in descriptive and applied linguistics. The papers reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa and also represent the breadth of the ACAL community, with papers from both students and more senior scholars, based in North America and beyond. They thus provide a snapshot on current research in African linguistics, from multiple perspectives. To mark the 50th anniversary of the conference, the volume editors reminisce, in the introductory chapter, about their memorable ACALs.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Celebrating 50 years of ACAL

  2021

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Computer Science
  • Library science

  The papers in this volume were presented at the 50th Annual Conference on African Linguistics held at the University of British Columbia in 2019. The contributions span a range of theoretical topics as well as topics in descriptive and applied linguistics. The papers reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa and also represent the breadth of the ACAL community, with papers from both students and more senior scholars, based in North America and beyond. They thus provide a snapshot on current research in African linguistics, from multiple perspectives. To mark the 50th anniversary of the conference, the volume editors reminisce, in the introductory chapter, about their memorable ACALs.

  Publisher

• African Linguistics in North-Eastern and So-Called Anglophone Africa

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2019-05-16

  book-chapterSenior author

  A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

  PublisherDOI

• African Linguistics in Official English-Speaking West Africa

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2019-05-31 · 28 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  The focus is largely on the contributions African scholars have made to the development of linguistics in the region. This cannot be done without acknowledging the contributions of non-Africans to this development. Many of the most influential African linguists received their training abroad, while other 'non'-African linguists spent sufficiently long periods of their careers in Africa as working linguists and training the early generation of African linguists. Language study in West Africa by African scholars predates the colonial period that established the Anglo/Francophone divide, at least in the person of Samuel Ajayi Crowther (1809-1891). Following the discussion of his work, the chapter looks briefly at other aspects of language study in Freetown, where he was situated, then to look at the true beginnings of modern linguistics in West Africa, with the contribution of the West African Language Survey, the establishment of the West African Linguistics Society/Socété Linguistique d'Afrique Oriental and the growth of linguistics departments, especially, in Ghana and Nigeria.

  PublisherDOI

• African linguistics in North-Eastern and so-called Anglophone Africa

  HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) · 2019-01-01

  book-chapterSenior author

  International audience

  Publisher

• Two Subject Asymmetries in DefakaFocus Constructions

  2012-01-01 · 8 citations

  article

  Defaka allows optional fronting of one XP in a clause; this fronting carries with it some type of discourse prominence, and is taken here to be a process of focus movement. Interestingly, this movement can trigger special morphology in two different places, depending on what kind of phrase is focused. This results in two asymmetries between subjects and other types of phrases. First, focused

  Publisher

• Featural Affixes

  The Blackwell Companion to Phonology · 2011-04-28 · 27 citations

  other1st authorCorresponding

  Featural affixes are phonological features that function as grammatical morphemes. The most commonly found cases are tonal (Akinlabi 1996). An example is the associative marker in Bini (Amayo 1976), exemplified in (1). (The forms before the arrow indicate the isolation forms of the nouns and the forms after the arrow are associative constructions. For clarity, the tones in the examples in (1) are indicated with both tone marks and the letters L, H for Low, High respectively. ↓ indicates a downstepped tone on the following vowel.)

  PublisherDOI

• Abstracts/Résumés

  The Canadian Journal of Linguistics / La revue canadienne de linguistique · 2009-07-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper discusses the four neutral vowels in Lokaa harmony, [i, u, a, a]. Crosslinguistically, neutral segments are either transparent or opaque. Lokaa harmony is important in three crucial respects. First, languages with both transparent and opaque vowels are not common; Lokaa has both. Secondly, though Lokaa has an eightvowel inventory the vowels [a] and [a] have not "re-paired". Thirdly, the historic ATR contrast found in Benue-Congo high vowels shows up when high vowel stems take mid-vowel prefixes, though the high vowels can only be [+ATR] on the surface; the ATR merger of high vowels in Lokaa is not complete. I show that the analytic framework of "headed span" theory accounts for a system with both transparent and opaque vowels. More importantly, I propose that within the headed span approach to harmony, both co-occurrence constraints and ASSOCIATEHEAD are crucial. Cooccurrence constraints control the language inventory, and the different rankings of the ASSOCIATEHEAD constraints indicate whether or not a feature will form part of an harmonic span.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Laura McPherson

  2 shared

• Laura J. Downing

  University of Gothenburg

  2 shared

• Michael Diercks

  2 shared

• Olúsèye Adésolá

  Yale University

  2 shared

• Bruce Connell

  York University

  2 shared

• Douglas Pulleyblank

  University of British Columbia

  2 shared

• Lee Bickmore

  University of the Free State

  2 shared

• Sharon Rose

  Vellore Institute of Technology University

  2 shared

Labs

• Research LabsPI

Education

• Ph.D., Linguistics

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  2009

• M.A., Linguistics

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  2004

• B.A., English Language and Literature

  University of Ibadan

  1999