Meg Zellers

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I am a PhD student at the Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge, and an Early Stage Researcher on the Marie Curie Research Training Network Sound to Sense.

My research focuses on the production and perception of prosodic topic-structure signalling in SSBE. I am currently finishing my PhD dissertation, Prosodic Detail and Topic Structure in Discourse. My research is part of Sound to Sense Project 8, Prosodic structure and fine phonetic detail: segmental-suprasegmental interaction. My PhD is supervised by Dr. Brechtje Post.

CV

Publications

Niebuhr, O. & Zellers, M. (in preparation) Late pitch accents in hat and dip intonation patterns.

Zellers, M. & Post, B. (to appear) Fundamental frequency and other prosodic cues to topic structure. In Proceedings of Workshop on the Discourse-Prosody Interface, Paris, France, 9-11 September 2009.

Zellers, M., Gubian, M. & Post, B. (2010) Redescribing intonational categories with Functional Data Analysis. In Proceedings of 11th Interspeech, Makuhari, Japan. (download)

Zellers, M. & Post, B. (2010) Aperiodicity at topic structure boundaries. In Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2010. Chicago, USA. (download)

Zellers, M., Post, B. & D'Imperio, M. (2009) Modelling the intonation of topic structure: two approaches. In Proceedings of 10th Interspeech, Brighton, England. (download)

Presentations

Zellers, M. & Post, B. "On-line perception of topic change intonation." Presentation at 4th Conference on Tone and Intonation in Europe, Stockholm, Sweden. 9-11 September 2010. (download)

Zellers, M. & Post, B. "Combining prosodic cues to signal topic structure." Poster presentation at BAAP, London, England. 29-31 March 2010. (download)

Zellers, M. "The prosody of topic organization." Invited talk at Department of General and Comparative Linguistics, Christian-Albrechts University, Kiel, Germany. 16 June 2010.

Zellers, M. "Perception of discourse prosody: preliminary results." Presentation at Sound to Sense workshop, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. 12-15 April 2010.

Zellers, M. & Post, B. "Intonation in discourse: gradient or categorical?" Poster presentation at Tone and Intonation in Europe, Barcelona, Spain. 17-18 September 2009. (download)

Zellers, M. "Fundamental frequency and discourse meaning." Presentation at Phonetics and Phonology in Iberia, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. 17 June 2009. (download)

Zellers, M. "Fundamental frequency and the production of intonation in SSBE." Presentation at RCEAL Tuesday Colloquium. 11 November 2008. (download)

Education
2007-present PhD Candidate, RCEAL, University of Cambridge

• Title: Prosodic Detail and Topic Structure in Discourse
• Expected completion date: January 2011

2006-2007 MPhil, English and Applied Linguistics, RCEAL, University of Cambridge

• MPhil project: Implicit learning of prosody: learnability of lexical stress patterns

2001-2004 BA, Linguistics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC

Employment
Oct 2010-present Teaching Assistant, Queen Mary, University of London

• Design and teach Sounds of English (introductory phonetics course)

Sept 2007-Sept 2010 Early Stage Researcher, Sound to Sense

• Project 8, Prosody and FPD: Segmental-Suprasegmental Interaction

Oct 2008-May 2009 Linguistic Consultant, Toshiba Cambridge Laboratory

• Phonetics/prosody consultant for speech synthesis

2005-2006 Teacher, English as a Second Language (AmeriCorps volunteer), Literacy Council of Northern Virginia, Annandale, VA

Contact

Email: mkz21 [at] cam.ac.uk

Snail mail: c/o Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics University of Cambridge 9 West Road Cambridge CB3 9DP United Kingdom