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Bert Remijsen's page

Affiliation and contact details

Photo by John Ohala

I am a Chancellor's Fellow in the subject area of Linguistics and English Language, which is part of the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, at the University of Edinburgh. The Chancellor's Fellowship is a research-focused position at the University of Edinburgh. Email: b.remijsen@ed.ac.uk Telephone: +44 (0)131 650 6657

Address: Linguistics & English Language The University of Edinburgh 3 Charles Street (DSB) Edinburgh EH8 9AD United Kingdom

Research interests

My main research interest is suprasegmental systems, that is, the way languages make use of pitch, duration, voice quality, loudness, and to some extent vowel quality. A lot of my research contributes to establishing what kinds of suprasegmental systems occur - or can occur - in the languages of the world. I select languages that are typologically unusual and/or complex with regard to their suprasegmentals, and I investigate them by means of phonological and phonetic analysis. Beyond the descriptive analysis of these systems, I use this knowledge to evaluate general hypotheses, such as Quantal Theory (Stevens 1989) and Dispersion Theory (Liljencrants & Lindblom 1972). In the past I have worked among others on languages that have stress and tone as independent phonological distinctions in their sound systems. These days I focus on the suprasegmental systems of Shilluk and of dialects of Dinka. Both Dinka and Shilluk are Nilotic languages that use tone, vowel length and voice quality intensively in morphological processes. If you want to know more, have a look at the project webpage. Another research interest is the documentation of the Matbat language. Matbat is located on the fuzzy boundary between the Austronesian and the Papuan languages. It has fewer than 600 speakers. My long-term goal is to arrive at an overall documentation of the language. I have a long way left to go here. Sound examples illustrating the word-prosodic systems of Matbat are available on the PIL page (click through to Languages).

Some recent presentations (recent to past)

25 of May 2012: "Tonal alignment as a phonological feature - evidence from Dinka" - The 20th Manchester Phonology Meeting. 4 of December 2011: "Tonal movement as a phonological feature - evidence from tonal alignment in Dinka" - ANU Tone Workshop: Workshop on Studying Tone Languages in New Guinea: elicitation, analysis, and archiving. 8 of November 2011: Shilluk morphology - a big system of inflection with a small segmental footprint. Surrey Linguistic Circle. 18-20 of February 2011: "The study of tone stands to gain from a greater use of sound data in training and in publications" - Berkeley Tone Workshop: Workshop on How to Study a Tone Language: from the first elicitation to the latest software.

Teaching and supervision

Supervision of postgraduate students I am the second supervisor for: Inga McKendry -- Inga is investigating the tone system of Mixtec (Oto-Manguean), which presents complex tone sandhi processes. Misnadin -- he is investigating the sound system of Madurese (Austronesian), and in particular the interaction between vowels and the consonants that preceed them. Darryl Turner -- he is investigating the morphology and syntax of Katcha (Nilo-Saharan), a language spoken in the Nuba Mountains. Teaching at University of Edinburgh In the 2012-2013 academic year, I am teaching the course Linguistic fieldwork and language description. I will also teach some lectures in the prehonours course module Linguistics & English Language 2D. In previous years, I have taught Advanced Prosody (together with Mariko Sugahara / Alice Turk), Historical Linguistics, Introduction to Statistics (together with Cathy Sotillo), Linguistics 2 - Phonology and Instrumental Phonetics modules, Hons foundation course in Phonetics and Phonology (with Satsuki Nakai and Alice Turk), Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology (MSc), and Linguistic fieldwork and language description. Phonetic fieldwork lecture at SOAS, 4 of December 2009 These lectures took place in the context of the Workshop on Teaching linguistic fieldwork and sustainability (SOAS, 4 December 2009). You can download the materials here (updated versions, uploaded Monday 7 of December 2009): presentation first hour (pdf format) presentation second hour (pdf format) dataset 1 (compressed file) dataset 2 (compressed file) dataset 3 (compressed file) dataset 4 (compressed file) Praat I use the signal processing package Praat, both for research and teaching. My Praat scripts page includes a presentation on the use of Praat for research on prosody, and scripts that have proven to be useful to many other users of the Praat software.

Publications
Appeared
B. Remijsen (2001)	Dialectal Variation in the Lexical Tone System of Ma`ya. Language and Speech 44(4), 473-499.
B. Remijsen (2002)	Word-prosodic systems of Raja Ampat languages. PhD diss. Leiden University - LOT Dissertation Series vol. 49. [If you are interested in receiving a copy, then please let me know. Reviewed by Graham Thurgood in Oceanic Linguistics 43(2), 522-524]
B. Remijsen (2002)	Lexically contrastive stress accent and lexical tone in Ma`ya. In C. Gussenhoven & N. Warner (eds.) Laboratory Phonology VII. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 585-614.
Remijsen, B. & V.J. van Heuven (2003)	On the categorical nature of intonational contrasts, an experiment on boundary tones in Dutch. In J. van de Weijer, V.J. van Heuven, & H.G. van der Hulst (eds.) The Phonological Spectrum - Volume II: Suprasegmental structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 225-246.
T. Hohe & B. Remijsen (2003)	Peacemaker for religious conflicts? The value of Pela relationships in Ambon. In M. Ramstedt (ed.) Hinduism in Modern Indonesia. Routledge Curzon, 126-143.
E. Lindström & B. Remijsen (2005)	Aspects of the prosody of Kuot, a language where intonation ignores stress. Linguistics 43(4), 839-870.
B. Remijsen & V.J. van Heuven (2005)	Stress, tone, and discourse prominence in the Curacao dialect of Papiamentu. Phonology 22(2), 205-235.
B. Remijsen & V.J. van Heuven (eds.) (2006)	Between Stress and Tone. Guest-edited thematic issue of Phonology 23(2).
B. Remijsen (2007)	Lexical tone in Magey Matbat. In V.J. van Heuven & E. van Zanten (eds.) Prosody in Indonesian languages. Utrecht: LOT Occasional Series vol. 9.
B. Remijsen & L. Gilley (2008)	Why are three-level vowel length systems rare? Insights from Dinka (Luanyjang dialect). Journal of Phonetics 36(2), 318-344.
B. Remijsen, F. Martis & R. Severing (2008)	The intonational system of Papiamentu (Curaçao variant). In N. Faraclas, R. Severing, & C. Weijer (eds.) Linguistic Studies on Papiamentu . Willemstad: Fundashon pa Planifikashon di Idioma, 181-220.
B. Remijsen & D.R. Ladd (2008)	The tone system of the Luanyjang dialect of Dinka. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 29(2), 173-213.
B. Remijsen & C. Adong Manyang (2009)	Luanyjang Dinka. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 39(1), 113-124. Available from the JIPA website - I recommend the pdf version with embedded sound files.
D.R. Ladd, B. Remijsen & C. Adong Manyang (2009)	On the distinction between regular and irregular inflectional morphology: evidence from Dinka. Language 85(3), 659-670.
B. Remijsen (2010)	Nouns and verbs in Magey Matbat. In M.C. Ewing & M. Klamer (eds.) Typological and Areal Analyses: Contributions from East Nusantara. Pacific Linguistics 618, 281-311.
E. van Zanten, R. Stoel, & B. Remijsen (2010)	Stress in Austronesian languages. In by Harry van der Hulst & Rob Goedemans, & Ellen van Zanten (eds.) A survey of the word accentual patterns in the languages of the world, 87-112. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
B. Remijsen, O.G. Ayoker & T. Mills (2011)	Shilluk. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 41(1), 131-145. Available from the JIPA website - I recommend the pdf version with embedded sound files.
B. Remijsen, A. Impey, E. Achol Ajuet Deng, S. Yak Deng Yak, P. Malek Ayuel Ring, J. Penn de Ngong, T. Reid, D. Robert Ladd & M. Meyerhoff (2012)	A Collection of Dinka Songs. A collection of songs from 38 individual singers and groups of singers, totaling over 180 song files. With index, introduction, and annotations. The collection is publicly available through Edinburgh DataShare, the electronic archive of the University of Edinburgh. Click here to access the opening page of the Dinka song collection online.
To appear
B. Remijsen, F. Martis & R. Severing (to appear)	The marked accentuation pattern of Curaçao Papiamentu. To appear in S.-A. Jun (ed.) Prosodic Typology II: The Phonology and Intonation of Phrasing . Oxford University Press.
B. Remijsen, C.L. Miller & L.G. Gilley (to appear)	Stem-internal and affixal morphology in Shilluk. To appear in M. Baerman (ed.) The Handbook of Inflection. Oxford University Press.
B. Remijsen (to appear 2013)	Tonal alignment is contrastive in falling contours in Dinka. To appear in Language 89(2). [You can download (a) a prepublication version of the paper: a pdf with sound examples embedded in relation to crucial contrasts of vowel length and tonal alignment; (b) the dataset: a compressed file (116Mb), containing the wav, TextGrid, Pitch and PitchTier objects on which the analysis in the Language paper is based.]

Pictures

Click here to see some pictures of the Raja Ampat archipelago. It is a beautiful place.