Abigail C Cohn

Overview

Cohn's research focuses primarily on phonetics and phonology and their interaction taking a laboratory phonology approach. Often, phonetics and phonology are viewed as distinct areas of study. Yet there is an implicit relationship between phonology --the abstract patterning of sounds as part of a sound system, and phonetics--the physical output. The nature of this mapping has been at the center of her research, in which she has investigated both processes and representations within phonology and phonetics.

Cohn also focuses on the documentation and analysis of the Austronesian languages of Indonesia; recently she has been focusing on the issues of language use and language shift of the local languages of Indonesia as impacted by the increased use of Indonesian. In 2012-13, she was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar, at Unika Atma Jaya carrying out a research project entitled Language Contact in Indonesia:  Shifts in Usage and their Structural Manifestations.

Research Focus

• Phonology
• Phonetics
• Laboratory Phonology
• Phonology-phonetics interface
• Language use and language shift in Indonesia
• Indonesian languages, English, French

Publications

Books

• Oxford Handbook of Laboratory Phonology. (2012) Cohn, C. Fougeron and M. Huffman, Oxford University Press.

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

• Phonology: Sound Structure, chapter 10. (2017). Cohn, A. In M. Aronoff and J. Rees-Miller (eds.) Handbook of Linguistics, 2^nd edition.  Oxford:  Wiley.  pp. 185-210.
• Laboratory Phonology (to appear) Cohn, A., C. Fougeron, and M. Huffman. In Anna Bosch and S.J. Hannahs (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Phonological Theory.
• Shared representations underlie metaphonological judgments and speech motor control. (2016) Tilsen, S. and A. Cohn, S. Laboratory Phonology.  Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology, 7(1), 14.
• Modeling social factors in language shift. (2016) Abtahian, M., A. Cohn and T. Pepinsky. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Volume 2016, Issue 242, Pages 139–170.
• Are there post-stopped nasals in Austronesian? (2016) Cohn, A and A. Riehl. NUSA:  Linguistic Studies of Languages in and around Indonesia. Volume 60: 29-57.
• Can a language with millions of speakers be endangered? (2014) Ravindranath, M and A. Cohn. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 7: 64-75.
• Local Languages in Indonesia: Language Maintenance or Language Shift? (2014) Cohn, A and M. Ravindranath. Linguistik Indonesia 32.2:  131-148.
• Interface between phonology and phonetics. (2014) Cohn, A. and M. Huffman. In Mark Aronoff (ed.) Oxford Bibliographies Online: Linguistics. New York:  Oxford University Press.
• Modern Adaptations to Life in Java. (2014) Cohn, A. Southeast Asia Program at Cornell Bulletin 5-9.
• A review of spelling acquisition:  Spelling development as a source of evidence for the psychological reality of the phoneme. (2013) Dich, N and A. Cohn Lingua 133: 213-229.
• Multilingual Language Use Questionnaire. (2013) Cohn, A., J. Bowden, T. McKinnon, M. Ravindranath, R. Simanjuntak, B. Taylor, Yanti.
• Kuesioner Penggunaan Bahasa Sehari-hari. (2013) Cohn, A., J. Bowden, T. McKinnon, M. Ravindranath, R. Simanjuntak, B. Taylor, Yanti.
• Features, Segments, and the Sources of Phonological Primitives, (2011) Cohn, A. In G. N. Clements and R. Ridouane (eds.) Where Do Features Come From? Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 15-41.
• "Partially-nasal segments," (with Anastasia Riehl) in M. van Oostendorp C. Ewen, E. Hume and K. Rice (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Phonology.  Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
• "Laboratory Phonology: Past Successes and current questions, challenges, and goals," in C. Fougeron, B. Kühnert, M. D'Imperio, N. Vallé (eds.) Laboratory Phonology 10. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 3-29, 2011.
• Is there gradient phonology?, in Gradience in Grammar: Generative Perspectives, G. Faneslow, C. Fery, R. Vogel, and M. Schlesewsky (eds.), Oxford: OUP, pp. 25-44, 2006.

See Research Gate for other publications including conference proceedings and working papers.

In the news

• Language ‘Sustainability through Collaboration’ Conference at Cornell
• Einaudi welcomes new program directors and opportunities
• Einaudi Center awards eight faculty grants
• Documentarian: Take down paywalls with open access to scholarship
• Conference to explore new Southeast Asian language pedagogies
• Linguist, architect named A.D. White Professors-at-Large
• Cornell hosts international linguistics conference