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robfelty.com

Curriculum Vitae

Robert Felty

Curriculum Vitae

Nuance Communciations

January 20, 2016

Education

  • University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
    Ph.D., May, 2007
    Dissertation title:

    Context Effects in Spoken Word Recognition of English and German by Native and Non-native Listeners
    Dissertation committee:

    • José Benkí (co-chair, Michigan State University, Communicative Sciences and Disorders)

    • Pam Beddor (co-chair, Linguistics)

    • Andries Coetzee (member, Linguistics)

    • Robert Kyes (member, German)

    Read Abstract
    Download pdf file of dissertation in ($\approx $ 1.6 MB):

  • Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute, Michigan State University
    enrolled student, 6/03–8/03

  • Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA
    B.A. in German with honors, December, 2000

  • Ludwig-Maximilian-University, Munich, Germany
    Semester Abroad, Spring, 1999

Research Interests

My research primarily focuses on German and English in the following areas:

  • Phonetics and Phonology

  • Speech perception

  • Spoken word recognition

  • Lexical Access

  • Second Language Acquisition

  • Dialectology and Sociolinguistics

In all my research areas, I take a data-driven approach, and incorporate experimental- corpus- and computational-based methods to data analysis.

Publications

  • 2013 — Robert Albert Felty, Tom Gruenenfelder, Adam Buchwald, and David B. Pisoni. Misperceptions of spoken words: Data from a random sample of American English words . Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 134 (1), 572–585. pdf Copyright (2013) Acoustical Society of America. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the Acoustical Society of America.

  • 2009 — Robert Albert Felty, Adam Buchwald, and David B. Pisoni. Adaptation to frozen babble in spoken word recognition. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125 (3), EL93–EL97.

  • 2007 — Confusion patterns and response bias in spoken word recognition of German disyllabic words and nonwords, in Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of the Phonetic Sciences, 1957–1960. .pdf

  • 2004 — The Ongoing (Un)merging of Stops in the Swabian Dialect of Isny im Allgäu (unpublished manuscript) .pdf

Conference Presentations

  • 2008 — Robert Felty, Adam Buchwald, and David B. Pisoni. Constructing neighborhood density from spoken word recognition errors. Presented at the 6th Conference on the Mental Lexicon, Banff, Alberta, October 7th–10th slides

  • 2008 — Robert Felty, Adam Buchwald, and David B. Pisoni. Lexical analysis of spoken word recognition errors. Poster presented at Acoustics ’08, Paris, France, June 29th–July 4th handout

  • 2008 — Adam Buchwald, Robert Felty, and David B. Pisoni. Neighbors as competitors: Phonological analysis of spoken word recognition errors. Poster to be presented at Acoustics ’08, Paris, France, June 29th–July 4th

  • 2007 — Robert Felty, Adam Buchwald, David B. Pisoni, and Melissa Troyer. Constructing neighborhood density through recognition errors. Poster presented at the 13th annual Mid-continental workshop on Phonology, Columbus, Ohio, October 26–28. handout

  • 2007 — Robert Felty. Confusion patterns and response bias in spoken word recognition of German disyllabic words and nonwords. Poster presented at the 16th International Congress of the Phonetic Sciences, Saarbrücken, Germany, August 6–10. .pdf

  • 2007 — Robert Felty. Context Effects in recognition of German disyllabic words and nonwords by native and non-native listeners. Poster presented at the 153rd meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Salt Lake City, Utah, June 3–8. Abstract handout

  • 2006 — Robert Felty and José Benkí. Context Effects in recognition of English disyllabic CVCCVC words and nonwords by native and non-native listeners. Poster presented at the 4th joint meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the Acoustical Society of Japan, Honolulu, Hawaii, Nov. 29 – Dec. 2. Abstract

  • 2006 — Robert Felty and José Benkí. Morphological Decomposition Revisited: Evidence from English and German speech-in-noise tasks. Poster presented at the 5th International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, Montreal, Quebec, Oct. 10 – 12. handout

  • 2006 — José Benkí and Robert Felty. Relative contributions of initial and final similarity to neighborhood density effects on English spoken word recognition. Poster presented at the 5th International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, Montreal, Quebec, Oct. 10 – 12. handout

  • 2005 — Robert Felty and José Benkí. Asymmetries in patterns of confusion of American English vowels. 11th Midcontinental Workshop on Phonology. University of Michigan Abstract handout

  • 2005 — José Benkí and Robert Felty. Recognition of English phonemes in noise. Poster presented at the 149th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Vancouver, British Columbia, May 15 – 20. 2568.

  • 2005 — The Ongoing (Un)merger of stops in the Swabian dialect of Isny im Allgäu. 11th Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference. University of California – Davis.

  • 2004 — Phonetics in the German Classroom: Teaching Umlaut. 10th Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference. University of Michigan. Abstract

  • 2003 — Perception and Production of front rounded vowels by English-speaking learners of German. 25th Second Language Research Forum. University of Arizona.

  • 2003 — The relationship between regional identity and regional variety: Language Attitudes in Munich and Berlin. 9th Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference. University of Buffalo. Abstract

Invited talks and guest lectures

  • 2007 — Cross-linguistic differences in lexical access and spoken word recognition. Talk given at University of Michigan colloquium series, March 9th, Ann Arbor, MI. slides (pdf $\approx $ 1.4 MB)

  • 2007 — Using linguistic databases for psycholinguistic, phonetic, and phonological research words. Guest lecture for Prof. Andries Coetzee’s seminar on Phonology, February 1st, Ann Arbor, MI. slides (pdf $\approx $ 1.4 MB)

  • 2006 — Context Effects in Spoken Word Recognition of English CVCCVC words and nonsense words. Talk given at University of Konstanz Linguistics department colloquium series, May 8th, Konstanz, Germany. slides (pdf $\approx $ 250KB)

Reviews

  • Manfred Pienemann. 2006. Cross-Linguistic Aspects of Processability Theory. Review for Linguist List, 17.2294, Aug. 10, 2006

  • Charles Russ. 2002. Die Mundart von Bosco Gurin: Eine synchronische und diachronische Untersuchung. (Book notice) in Language 82:220–221. 2006.

  • Daniela Berroth. 2001. Altersbedingter Mundartgebrauch: Sprachwandel und Kontinuität in einem mittelschwäbischen Dialekt. (Book notice) in Language 80:614. 2004.

  • Volkmar Engerer. 2000. The Loss of German in Upper Silesia after 1945. (Book notice) in Language 80:620. 2004.

Courses Taught

University of Colorado – Boulder

  • 2009 Fall term — Linguistics 5200. Introduction of Computational Corpus Linguistics

Indiana University

  • 2008 Fall term — Linguistics 555. Programming for computational linguists (python)

University of Michigan

  • 2006 Summer term — Linguistics 211. Introduction to Language.

  • 2005 Summer term — German 230. Third/Fourth semester intermediate course.

  • 2003 Fall term — German 231. Third semester intermediate course.

  • 2002 Spring term — German 102. Second semester introductory course.

  • 2002 Winter term — German 101. First semester introductory course.

Research

  • 2006 — Ann Arbor, MI and Konstanz, Germany — collected data from psycholinguistic experiments in English and German for the dissertation

  • 2004–2005 — Research Assistant for Dr. José Benkí on the project “Measuring context effects in spoken word recognition”.

  • 2003 — Fieldwork in Isny im Allgäu, Germany — conducted and recorded sociolinguistic interviews.

Awards/Grants

  • 2007 — NIH post-doctoral traineeship

  • 2005 — Candidacy Fellowship (awarded by the Linguistics department)

  • 2003 — Rackham Graduate School discretionary fund grant for research expenses.

  • 2001 — Regents Fellowship from the University of Michigan.

  • 2001 — Phi Beta Kappa Member.

  • 2001 — German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) short-term fellowship (declined).

  • 1997–2000 — Trustee Merit scholarship from Grinnell College.

Service

Professional Societies

  • Society for Germanic Linguistics

  • Linguistic Society of America

  • American Association of Teachers of German

  • Acoustical Society of America

Languages

  • Fluent in: English, German.

  • Reading knowledge of: Old English, Middle English, Old Norse, Gothic, Middle High German, Old Saxon, Classical Latin.

Technical Skills

  • Competent in Macintosh, UNIX/Linux, and Windows operating systems

  • Adept with acoustic analysis of speech signals with Praat

  • Proficient in web development technologies, including (x)html, css, javascript, AJAX, apache, mysql, PHP, XML, and various CMS/Wiki/blogging systems

  • Fluent in Perl, Python, Matlab, and UNIX shell scripting

  • 3+ years experience maintaining LAMP server hosting several different websites

  • Comfortable with source content management (Subversion, git)

  • Experience with a variety of statistical analysis methods, including ANOVA, multiple regression, monte-carlo, MDS, PCA, and bootstrapping, using SPSS, Matlab, and R