Z. Khalaji Pirbaluti

I’m a graduate student of Linguistics interested in Phonology and Learnability.

About

In my research, I have an inquiring mind primarily about:

  • phonology and acquisition
  • puzzles in the data, in particular if they have a learnability angle
  • artificial grammar learning

Main methods shaping my research are:

  • experimental studies
  • computational modelling
  • corpus and quantitative analysis

Main topics that interest me:

  • learning with regards to morpho-phonology (and modularity) + learning of “exceptions”
  • learning phonotactics and the role of statistical learning and a priori biases
  • “surfeit of the stimulus” knowledge (soft a priori biases that do not reflect the experience of a speaker)
  • different learning algorithms

Fascinations inside of linguistics:

  • architecture of phonological grammar and how it fits in with other modules in the linguistic theory
  • formal nature of the computational procedures in the grammar
  • history of linguistics schools/ideas

I go by my alias Gazelle (aka [ɢazɑle]). My last name in IPA: Khalaji [xalaʤi].

  • Fun fact # 1: I haven’t been a particularly fast mammal most of my life. (Sorry, Mom)
  • Fun fact # 2: My last name is a southwestern non-Oghuz Turkic Language. Unfortunately, with less than 20,000 speakers today, it’s in an endangered state. (Disclaimer: I am not a speaker).

Here are some of my fascinations adjacent to but outside of linguistics:

  • evolution of writing systems
  • visualization of data as a way of storytelling with maps/graphs
  • making art with R
  • spreadsheets of various size
  • archiving and database creation
  • dictionaries/encyclopedias
  • maps and atlas
  • jigsaw puzzles
  • using big data in sports
  • science outreach to young students

Projects

[2023-]

This is my M.A. Thesis project I am working on currently which involves an artificial language learning experiment focusing on learning of morpho-phonological processes resembling French Liaison that are described as phonologically conditioned allomorphy.

This paper was the result of a field methods course project on Nɬeʔkepmxcín vowel variation. The aim of this study was to test the available impressionistic descriptions of vowel variation (in three consonantal environments (pre-velar, post-velar, labial) in both prevocalic and postvocalic positions) as well as comparing the coarticulation effects including retraction of vowels with other neighboring languages.

[2019 - 2021]

This thesis project has focused on the SSP projection effects and learning phonotactics, using 2 acceptability judgment experiments with nonword stimuli. I wanted to know if Persian speakers exhibit any sensitivity to the SSP taking into account their linguistic experience with Persian phonotactic constraints with a CVC(C) syllable structure. Persian syllables have no attested onset clusters, and 21% of its attested coda clusters are against the SSP. The results confirmed the view that speakers can generalize their phonotactic knowledge beyond their lexicon and the fact that they exhibit some innate biases despite their lack of experience, aka the POS argument.

[2021- under publication]

This study aims to investigate a phonological process involving guttarals in Meymandi, a dialect of Persian. In our analysis, we claim there is a pharyngealization harmony process in Meymandi which interacts with another common process in various dialects of Persian, Compensatory lengthening. This analyses is further accompanied by reports of acoustic measurements showing the phonetic evidence for this interaction.

This is a project at IPA to translate the full IPA chart’s metatext in different languages of the world. I volunteered to translate it to Persian. There’s also an interactive chart translation project translation ongoing. The link to the translated charts can be found here