Michael Ramsammy | The University of Edinburgh

Lecturer

Linguistics and English Language
School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences

Tel: 0131 650 3959
Email: m.ramsammy@ed.ac.uk

Street: Room 3.03, Dugald Stewart Building
City: 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh
Post code: EH8 9AD

Office hours:
My office is 3.03 in Dugald Stewart Building. I don't have set weekly office hours. Please email m.ramsammy@ed.ac.uk to arrange an appointment.

Teaching & PhD supervision

Undergraduate teaching

Teaching:

LASC10093 Sign Language Linguistics
LASC10089 Current Issues in Phonology
LASC10083 Phonological Theory and English Phonology
LASC10046 Historical Phonology
LASC10102 Language Variation and Change
LASC08022 Linguistics and English Language 1A (LEL1A)
LASC08023 Linguistics and English Language 1B (LEL1B)

Postgraduate teaching

LASC11089 Introduction to Phonology (MSc)
LASC11165 Guided Research in LEL: Sign Language Phonology

I'm also the programme director for the MSc in Linguistics (see here: http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate/degrees/index.php?r=site/view&id=908). Please get in touch if you have any enquiries about this programme.

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Areas of interest for supervision

I'm happy to supervise PhD and MSc projects that align in some way with my research interests. Below is a list of titles of some dissertations and theses that I've supervised in recent years. Potential students should feel free to contact me directly to discuss research supervision with me.

Recent dissertation/thesis titles:

Unnatural consonant epenthesis doesn't exist
The social meaning of /r/ in Austrian German
Vowel qualities and language attitudes of Derby adolescents: a study of PRICE, TRAP/BATH and FOOT/STRUT
The Realness: style-shifting in drag performance
The acquisition of /l/-darkening by Spanish-English bilinguals
The effect of iconicity on L2 acquisition of British Sign Language
I see what you did there. Iconicity aids the acquisition of signs in the gestural modality.
To what extent does Kazakh have rounding harmony?

Current PhD students supervised

Research

Research summary

I have a broad range of interests in Linguistics. These include (but are not limited to) the following:

Experimental and theoretical phonology
Articulatory and acoustic phonetics
Historical phonology and sound change
Sign language linguistics, with a focus on BSL
Romance Linguistics, with a focus on Portuguese and Spanish
Indo-Aryan Linguistics, particularly Hindi
Caribbean Creole Englishes, especially Guyanese Creole English
Sociophonetics and language variation

Research activities

Phonological variation in post-colonial varieties of Spanish: an overview of experimental research 9 Dec 2021
On /l/-insertion in Hindi causative verbs 6 Dec 2021 to 8 Dec 2021
Towards an analysis of of vowel alternations and epenthesis in Hindi causative verbs 19 Sep 2021
Sound change and rhythm in Altiplateau Mexican Spanish 22 Jun 2021
An ultrasound study of mid-vowel neutralisation in Portuguese: the effects of stress, nasality and variable nasalisation 21 Jun 2021
Strengthening and weakening at domain edges: evidence from Spanish 30 Apr 2021
Vowel nasality in Brazilian Portuguese: variability is context and quality dependent 26 Jun 2017

View all 14 activities on Research Explorer

Publications

Contextual reduction of word-final /l/ in Spanish: An EPG study 19 Jul 2021 In: Journal of the International Phonetic Association, pp. 1-28
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025100321000128
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published)
I see what you did there: The role of iconicity in the acquisition of signs 2018
Research output: › Chapter (peer-reviewed) (Published)
The phonology-phonetics interface in constraint-based grammar: Gradience, variability and phonological change (32 pages) 21 Dec 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315675428
Research output: › Chapter (peer-reviewed) (Published)
Preface: Papers in Historical Phonology 30 Nov 2016 In: Papers in Historical Phonology, vol. 1, pp. 1-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2218/pihph.1.2016.1689
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Editorial (Published)
From phonetic enhancement to phonological underspecification: Hybrid voicing contrast in European Portuguese 30 Nov 2016 In: Papers in Historical Phonology, vol. 1, pp. 285-315
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2218/pihph.1.2016.1704
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published)
Micro-variation in information structure: There sentences in Italo-Romance Dec 2015
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110368758
Research output: › Chapter (peer-reviewed) (Published)
Preaspiration in North Argyll Gaelic and its contribution to prosodic structure 13 Jul 2015
Research output: Contribution to Conference › Paper (Published)
Production and perception of (ing) in Manchester English (13 pages) 23 Mar 2015
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.17.15sch
Research output: › Chapter (Published)
The life cycle of phonological processes: accounting for dialectal microtypologies Jan 2015 In: Language and Linguistics Compass, vol. 9, pp. 33-54
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12102
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published)
Exploring the social meanings of (ing) in Manchester Jun 2013
Research output: Contribution to Conference › Paper (Published)

View all 23 publications on Research Explorer

This article was published on 12 May, 2022