Sara Finley                          

I have recently defended my dissertation which will be posted here very soon.

I will start work as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Rochester in Brain and Cognitive Sciences this August.

Education

• PhD. 2008. Cognitive Science. The formal and cognitive restrictions on vowel harmony. Advisors (Paul Smolensky and William Badecker).

• M.A., 2005 Cognitive Science. Qualifying Paper: Morphological Influences on Vowel Harmony Advisor: Paul Smolensky)

• B.A., 2003: Psychology (with honors), Linguistics (with honors), University of California, Santa Cruz Honors Thesis: A lexical access account of denominal verbs. Advisor: Jim McCloskey

• University of Copenhagen. Summer 2001, Fall 2002. (Part of UC Education Abroad Program)

Summer Enrichment

• Phonology Fest, 2006, Indiana University.
• EGG, 2006, Olomouc, Czech Republic
• LSA Summer Linguistics Institute, 2005. Harvard, MIT.

Research Interests

Phonology, Morphology, Optimality Theory, Lexical Innovations, Psycholinguistics, Representation in Phonology, Artificial Grammar Learning, Modality in Language Learning

My research addresses the question: what do people know when they use language? Focusing specifically on phonological processes, this includes questions about the psychological reality of markedness and other constraints in optimality theory and theoretical explanations of phonological processes. My research integrates theoretical and experimental methodoligies, using the artificial grammar learning paradigm to explore the typological predictions that Optimality Theory makes.

I am currently in the writing stage of my dissertation: "Formal and Cognitive Restrictions on Vowel Harmony." This dissertation explores the theoretical issues that vowel harmony has raised for Optimality Theory (specifically myopia (sour greapes spreading and majority rules effects, and transparency). I have developed a novel approach to representations in OT, based on Turbidity Theory (Goldrick 2000, 2001). Using finite-state machines, I show that the typology predicted by this theory avoids unattested languages and pathologies. Continuing my work on artificial grammar learning experiments, I have conducted experiments exploring the nature of biases in vowel harmony, including majority rules effects, and directionality.

Previous theoretical phonology research has focused on the influences of morphology on phonological processes in vowel harmony. These questions involve how morphologically controlled harmony might be represented differently from purely phonological harmony, whether it is possible to have multiple harmonic features and how they should be handled within OT. I propose a distinction between prototypical phonological vowel harmony, which is induced by markedness and morphological vowel harmony, featural affixation via vowel harmony, which is triggered by faithfulness.

Papers

• Finley, S. and Badecker, W. Right-to-left biases for vowel harmony: Evidence from
  artificial grammar. To appear in the Proceedings of the 38th North East Linguistic Society Annual Meeting. Paper Available
• Finley and Badecker. 2007. Towards a substantively biased theory of learning. To appear in BLS 33 Proceedings. Paper Available
• 2006. Morpheme correspondence and vowel harmony in Korean. Harvard Studies in Korean Linguistics, XI; 131-144. Paper Available
• 2007. Height-based restrictions on vowel harmony in Mayak. In Leah Bateman, Adam Werle, Michael O'Keefe, and Ehren Reilly, eds., Papers in Optimality Theory 3, University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics 33. Amherst, MA: GLSA Publications. Paper Available
• Finley, S.The interaction of vowel harmony and epenthesis. CLS Proceedings.

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  Papers in Preparation (email for most recent draft)
  • Morphemic harmony as featural correspondence (submitted)
  • Exceptions in harmony are local (in revisions)
  • Artificial language learning and feature-based generalization (in revisions)
  • Finley, S., and Badecker, W. Analytic biases for vowel harmony languages. Proceedings of WCCFL.

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  Conference Presentations

• Finley, S., and Badecker, W. Front/back asymmetries for height harmony. Poster presented at LabPhon 11, Wellington, New Zealand, June/July 2008.
• Finley, S., and Badecker, W. Analytic biases for vowel harmony languages. Talk presented at WCCFL, May 2008, UCLA.
• Finley, S.The interaction of vowel harmony and epenthesis. Talk presented at CLS, April,2008.
• 2008 Finley, S. and Badecker, W. Right-to-left biases for harmony: Evidence from artificial grammar. Talk presented at the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, January, Chicago. Handout Available
• 2008 Finley, S. Myopia in vowel harmony: A representational approach. Poster presented at the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, January, Chicago. Handout Available
• 2007 Finley, S. and Badecker, W. Linguistic and non-linguistic factors in artificial grammar learning. Poster presented at the 48th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomics Society, November, Long Beach, CA.Handout Available
• 2007 Finley, S. and Badecker, W. Right-to-left biases for vowel harmony: Evidence from artificial grammar. Talk presented at the 38th North East Linguistic Society Annual Meeting, October 26, University of Ottawa, Ontario.
• 2007 Finley, S., W. Substantive biases for vowel harmony. Poster presented at 4th Hopkins Workshop on Language, October 13, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. Finley and Badecker. 2007. Towards a substantively biased theory of learning. BLS 33
• Finley & Badecker. The cognitive basis for restrictions on vowel harmony. Talk presented at the Old World Conference in Phonology (OCP4), January 2007, Rhodes, Greece. Handout Available
• Finley & Badecker. The cognitive basis for restrictions on feature-based learning. Talk presented at the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, January 2007, Anaheim CA.
• Finley & Badecker. Vowel harmony, feature-based learning and implicit language learning. Poster presented at Psychonomics Society, November 2006, Houston.
• Finley & Badecker. Feature based generalization and artificial language learning. Member Poster presented at Cognitive Science, July 2006, Vancouver. Poster Available
• A correspondence approach to vowel harmony in Lena Spanish. Talk presented at HUMDRUM 2006. April 29-30, Johns Hopkins University. Handout Available
• Locality and lexically indexed constraints in vowel harmony. Talk presented at OCP 3, Budapest, Jan 20, 2006. Handout Available
• Lexical exceptions in vowel harmony. Talk presented at MCWOP, Nov 4-6 2005.
• Locality and lexical exceptions in vowel harmony. Talk presented at MLS, Oct 15, 2005.
• Morpheme correspondence and vowel harmony in Korean. Talk presented at Harvard ISOKL. Aug 7, 2005.
• High vowel triggers and morphological variation in Mayak. Talk presented at HUMDRUM 2005. April 23, 2005. Umass. Handout Available
• Morphological influences on vowel harmony. Poster presented at OCP2, Jan 20-22, CASTL, Tromsø Norway.
• Morphological influences on vowel harmony. Poster presented at HOWL3, Jan 14-15, 2005, Johns Hopkins University.
• Morphological influences on vowel harmony. Talk presented at the LSA Annual Meeting, January 6-9, 2005, Oakland, CA. Handout Available
• A Morpheme-Specific Constraint Approach to Vowel Harmony in Korean. Member Poster, 2004 Cognitive Science Society, Chicago. Abstract Available
• Are morpheme-specific constraints necessary?  HUMDRUM 2004. Rutgers University. May 1-2, 2004. Handout Available.

Courses Taught (Teaching Assistantships)

• Cognition (Spring 2007, Frank)
• Structure of English (Fall 2006, Burzio)
• Psycholinguistics (Spring 2006, Badecker)
• Phonology I (Fall 2005, Burzio)
• Language and Thought (Fall 2004, Landau)
• World of Language (Spring 2004, Spring 2005,  Legendre)
• Language Society and Culture (Winter 2003, Padgett)

Honors and Awards

Graduate Honors:

•     LSA Institute Tuition Fellowship (2005)
•     Jacob Javits Fellowship, Department of Education (2004-present)
•     Honorable Mention, NSF Graduate Fellowship (2004)

Selected Undergraduate Honors:

•     UCSC Regents Scholar (1999-2003)
•     Deans and Chancellor's Awards for undergraduate research (2003)
•     Merrill Scholars (2003)
•     Outstanding Scholar in Psychology (2003)
•     College Honors, Honors in Psychology, Honors in Linguistics (2003)

Department Service

• Hopkins Workshop on Language (HOWL) (2007 Organizational Committee Member)
• JHU Linguistics Lab (2004-present)
• Graduate Representative Organization department representative (2005-2007)
• HUMDRUM graduate student conference organizer (2006)
• HUMDRUM graduate student conference local organizer (2005)

Languages

• English (native)
• Danish (intermediate)
• Spanish, German (beginner)
• C++

Courses Taken

• OT Seminar (Smolensky, Fall 2006)
• Seminar in Experimental Linguistics (Fall 2006)
• Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (Landau, Spring 2006)
• Phonology II (Burzio, Spring 2006 (audit))
• Professional Psychology (Yantis, Spring 2006)
• Formal Methods, Neural Networks (Smolensky, Fall 2005)   
• Phonology Seminar (Smolensky, Fall 2005)
• OT Research Seminar (Burzio, Spring 2005)
• Philosophy of Language (Spring 2005)
• Intro to Programmin in C++ (Spring 2005)
• Syntax 2 (Fall 2004, Frank; Spring, 2006, Legendre (audit))
• Advanced Statistical Methods (Fall 2004, Yantis)
• Foundations of Cognitive Science (Spring 2004, Smolensky)
• Morphophonology (Spring 2004, Burzio)
• Syntax I (Spring 2004, Legendre (audit))
• Introduction to Phonetics (Spring 2004, Epstein (audit))
• Formal Methods in Cognitive Science- Language (Fall 2003, Frank)
• Field Methods in Linguistics (Fall 2003, Legendre)
• Topics in Language Processing (Fall 2003, 2005, Badacker)
• OT Seminar (Fall 2003, Legendre, Smolensky)

Last Update: 7/20/08