Photo by Stephanie Shih

Jonah Katz

Associate Professor
Department of World Languages, Literatures, & Linguistics
West Virginia University
katzlinguist@gmail.com

I am a phonetician and phonologist, using a wide variety of methodologies (production and perception experiments, traditional grammatical description, corpus studies, computational and statistical modeling) to study the nature of sound patterns in the world's languages and their relationship to physical and perceptual aspects of speech. I also study the structure and cognition of music, and some of my recent work explores similarities between music and language in terms of Gestalt principles of grouping and their relationship to abstract constituency relations. I got my PhD from MIT Linguistics in 2010. Edward Flemming was the chair of my dissertation committee (Donca Steriade and Adam Albright were the other members). My dissertation, 'Compression effects, perceptual asymmetries, and the grammar of timing' is here (PDF, 7 M).

CV (PDF, 182 k, updated 5/2023).

For my students: Course materials from Ling 411 and Ling 611 to help you prepare for the comprehensive exam. See also the Comp guidelines.

Papers