A fundamental challenge for the theory of speech perception is to explain how listeners successfully map signals that vary extensively across talkers to a common set of sounds and words. Discovery of higher-order structure in phonetic and phonological variation — patterns of variation that transcend invidual phonetic or phonological units, and that can be encoded by a relatively small number of talker-specific parameters — could provide the key for understanding the robustness of speech perception and patterns of generalization observed in talker adaptation.


We invite submissions on higher-order structure in phonetic / phonological variation across talkers or on the relation between structured talker variation and speech perception. Students are especially encouraged to submit. We hope to have a mix of oral and poster presentations and plenty of time for discussion.

  • Submissions for talk or poster presentations, in pdf format and no longer than two pages, should be sent by April 30th directly to one of the co-organizers: Meghan or Colin

  • For further details on the topics and scope of the workshop, see the longer call for submissions here