Heather Goad Explained

Heather Goad is a Canadian linguist. Her research explores areas of phonology and language acquisition, especially investigating the shapes of phonological systems, including contrasts in English, French, Korean, Portuguese, Italian and Nepali,[1] as well as the developmental paths of acquiring speech sounds by first and second language learners.[2]

Career and research

Goad earned her BA in Linguistics at the University of British Columbia and completed her PhD in Linguistics in 1994 at the University of Southern California under the supervision of Jean-Roger Vergnaud.[3]

Since 1992 she has taught in the Department of Linguistics at McGill University, and served there as an associate dean in Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.[4]

Goad's work on child language has shown the prevalence of consonant harmony via primary place of articulation.[5] The influence of her acquisition studies has been cited for showing the phonetic basis of variation of -s plural forms on real vs. novel plural production.[6] She created a corpus of longitudinal child speech data of English and French learners,[7] [8] which scholars from multiple institutions have used for research work.[9] [10] The corpus is part of the PhonBank project,[11] funded by Quebec with an FCAR grant (Fonds pour la formation de chercheurs et l'aide à la recherche).

In 2015 she and Lydia White were awarded a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) to study the Phonological Effects on Grammatical Representation and Processing, which looks at the phonological knowledge of second language learners and bilingual speakers, putting forward the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis (PTH), a theory that proposed an explanation for kinds of difficulties that language learners experience with the morphosyntax of a second language.[12] As part of the conversation that their work initiated, in conjunction with their article on this theory, they published a response in Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism.[13]

Goad contributed to work comparing the range of sound patterns acquired by humans with the set sound patterns acquired by zebra finches.[14] [15]

Awards and honors

Goad was an invited speaker at the 2015 West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, held in Vancouver.[16]

In 2014, she was an invited lecturer in phonology and language acquisition at the Norwegian Graduate Researcher School in Linguistics and Philology.[17]

She was a co-editor of the Canadian Journal of Linguistics from 1994-2003 and an Associate Editor of Language Acquisition from 2004-2014.

Since 2013 she has been a member of the Editorial Board of Language Acquisition.

She is on the Advisory Boards for two book series: the Oxford Studies in Phonology series published by Oxford University Press and the Language Acquisition & Language Disorders series published by John Benjamins.

Selected publications

Notes and References

  1. M. Schwarz, M. Sonderegger, H. Goad. "Realization and representation of Nepali laryngeal contrasts: Voiced aspirates and laryngeal realism." Journal of Phonetics. 2019
  2. Cassandra Szklarski. Mama or papa? Experts explain science behind babies’ first words. Globe and Mail. May 4, 2016.
  3. http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15799coll36/id/231085 USC Digital Library. "On the configuration of height features."
  4. Web site: Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies | 2013–2014 Programs, Courses and University Regulations - McGill University.
  5. Chen Gafni. 2012. Child Consonant Harmony:Identification and Properties. Brill’s Annual of Afoasiatic Languages and Linguistics 4, 30–54.
  6. Michael T. Ullman and Myrna Gopnik. “Inflectional morphology in a family with inherited specific language impairment.” Applied Psycholinguistics 20 (1999), p.101.
  7. Web site: PhonBank French Goad/Rose Corpus. phonbank.talkbank.org.
  8. Web site: IASCL - Child Language Bulletin - Vol 33, No 1: August 2013. iascl.talkbank.org.
  9. Babcock, Lindsay 2006. The role of input statistics in acquisition: an investigation of phonological development in twins. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.
  10. Parsons, Jennifer M. 2006. Positional Effects in Phonological Development: A Case Study. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.
  11. Web site: PhonBank. phonbank.talkbank.org.
  12. Heather Goad, Lydia White. 2019. Prosodic effects on L2 grammars. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
  13. Heather Goad and Lydia White. 2019. “Reply to commentaries” Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, Volume 9, Issue 6, Dec 2019, p. 895 - 900.
  14. Web site: Songbirds may have 'universal grammar'. November 24, 2017.
  15. Web site: Do Birdsong and Human Speech Share Biological Roots?. November 22, 2017.
  16. Web site: Conference: WCCFL 33. 12 June 2014.
  17. Web site: Summer School 2014 - Lectures and activities - Norwegian Graduate Researcher School in Linguistics and Philology - NTNU. www.ntnu.edu.

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