Kie Ross Zuraw Professor, UCLA Department of Linguistics Vice Chair - Director of Undergraduate Studies, UCLA Department of Linguistics 3125 Campbell Hall, Box 951543 Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543 phone: 310-825-0634 e-mail: kie@ucla.edu

Research interests

• Computational and quantitative approaches to phonology, probabilistic grammars
• Relationship of phonological grammar to processing
• Phonology of code-mixing and code-switching
• Loanword phonology and morphology
• Linguistic evidence from music
• Exceptionful linguistic patterns
• Language change
• Filipino, Tagalog, Palauan, Malagasy, Javanese, Samoan, Tongan and other Austronesian languages
• Korean
• French

View my CV (as .pdf)

About me

• Kie, my personal name, rhymes with English 'pie'
• Zuraw, my family name, rhymes with English 'FUR paw' (main stress is on first syllable)
• You can use the pronoun she to refer to me in English, and feminine pronouns in other languages that have them. In languages with gender agreement you can use feminine agreement for me.

Jump to...

• Research output (downloadable papers)
  
• Advisees
  
• Teaching and downloadable course materials
  
• Free software
  
• Ephemera and materials for the public
  
• Webtoon: The Comic Guide to Linguistics
  

Research output

If the link to the title doesn't let you access the article, try the link for the pre-print version. Pre-print versions are not identical to final published versions.

• Zuraw, Kie (2022). Interview with Donka Minkova. Journal of English Linguistics


• Zuraw, Kie (2022). Four inclusive practices for the phonology classroom. Proceedings of the 2021 Annual Meeting on Phonology. Ed. by Peter Jurgec, Liisa Duncan, Emily Elfner, Yoonjung Kang, Alexei Kochetov, Brittney K. O'Neill, Avery Ozburn, Keren Rice, Nathan Sanders, Jessamyn Schertz, Nate Shaftoe, and Lisa Sullivan.


• Zuraw, Kie, Isabelle Lin, Meng Yang, and Sharon Peperkamp (2021). Competition between whole-word and decomposed representations of English prefixed words. Morphology 31:201-237.
  pre-print version
  We follow up the production study of Zuraw & Peperkamp 2015 (with additional analysis) with a priming study to show that we can influence how people pronounce words like 'misperceive' by priming morphological structure.


• Shoichi Iwasaki, Susan Strauss, Shin Fukuda, Sun-Ah Jun, Sung-Ock Sohn, and Kie Zuraw, editors (2020). Japanese/Korean Linguistics, Volume 26. CSLI Publications.


• Zuraw, Kie, Ann M. Aly, Isabelle Lin, and Adam J. Royer (2019). Gotta catch 'em all: skills grading in undergraduate linguistics. Language: Teaching Linguistics 95(4): e406-e427.
  supplementary materials, including syllabi and homework instructions
  pre-print version
  How and why we implemented skills grading in undergraduate phonetics and phonology courses.


• Zuraw, Kie, Kathleen Chase O'Flynn, and Kaeli Ward (2019). Non-native contrasts in Tongan loans. Phonology 36(1): 127-170.
  Pre-print version
  We show that patterns in Tongan loans from English can be captured using only constraints that plausibly are needed for native-word phonology, including constraints that reflect perceptual strategies.


• Daland, Robert and Kie Zuraw (2018). Loci and locality of informational effects on phonetic implementation. Linguistics Vanguard 4(s2).
  We consider various challenges to identifying the loci of informational effects on phonetic implementation - do they arise in production, perception, memory, or some combination?
  


• Zuraw, Kie (2018). Beyond trochaic shortening. Language: Phonological Data and Analysis 94(1): e1-e42.
  Pre-print version
  Surveys how languages in the Central Pacific family handle underlying forms like /maali/, including breaking (e.g., Tongan), tochaic shortening (Fijian), and tolerance. Finds limited evidence for productive trochaic shortening. Suggests that neturalizations in core member of paradigm is hard to learn and lexicalization of whole words is one solution. Also finds some divergence between root phonotactics and alternations.


• Shih, Stephanie and Kie Zuraw (2017). Phonological conditions on variable adjective-noun word order in Tagalog. Language: Phonological Data and Analysis 93: e317-e352.
  Pre-print version
  Shows that variable word order in Tagalog adjective/noun combinations optimizes for phonological structure, including phonotactic, syllabic, and morphophonological well-formedness preferences that are also found elsewhere in Tagalog grammar. Results indicate that surface phonological information is accessible for word order choice.


• Zuraw, Kie and Hayes, Bruce (2017). Intersecting constraint families: An argument for harmonic grammar. Language 93: 497-548.
  supplemental materials, including R code and results
  pre-print version
  In three case studies (Tagalog, French, Hungarian), when two independent families of constraints intersect, Harmonic Grammar provides a better model of variation than competing constraint-based models of variation. In particular, Harmonic Grammar easily captures floor and ceiling effects in both dimensions, with maximal variation in the middle. Supplemental materials include raw data and html files narrating statistical analysis, which can be reproduced using RStudio.


• Zuraw, Kie (2017). Quantitative component interaction: data from Tagalog nasal substitution. In Heather Newell, Máire Noonan, Glyne Piggott, and Lisa Travis (eds.), The structure of words at the interfaces. Oxford University Press, Pp. 126-140.


• Zuraw, Kie (2016). Polarized variation. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 15: 145-171.
  Many variable phonological phenomena show a U-shaped rather than bell-shaped distribution: there are many items (words or phrases) that always show one behavior, and many that always show the other, with not so many in between. Documents several cases and gives a schematic diachronic model of how U-shaped and bell-shaped distributions could arise.


• Minkova, Donka and Kie Zuraw (2016). Ambisyllabicity in English: present and past. The Cambridge handbook of English historical linguistics. Cambridge University Press, Pp. 424-443.


• Zuraw, Kie and Sharon Peperkamp (2015). Aspiration and the gradient structure of English prefixed words. In The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015 (Ed.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Glasgow, UK: the University of Glasgow. Paper number 0382, 1-5.
  A production study to look for words that vary between stem-initial aspiration (like mis-type) and non-aspiration (like mistake), and a look at the frequency factors that correlate.
  Here's the poster, with some plots that don't appear in the paper.


• Zuraw, Kie (2015). Allomorphs of French de in coordination: a reproducible study. Linguistics Vanguard.
  Pre-print version
  Unlike English, French usually retains the second de in a phrase like morceaux de carottes et (de) tomates 'pieces of carrots and (of) tomatoes', but dropping the second de is possible. The rate at which this happens differs depending on whether the two words being coordinated begin with vowels or consonants.


• Zuraw, Kie; Kristine Yu; and Robyn Orfitelli (2014). Word-level prosody of Samoan. Phonology 31: 271-327.
  Pre-print version
  An in-depth look at the word-level prosody of Samoan: stress, vowel length, treatment of vowel sequences, interaction with morphology.


• Daland, Robert and Kie Zuraw (2013). Does Korean defeat phonotactic word segmentation? Proceedings of the 51st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 2: Short Papers). Pp. 873-877.
  Pre-print version
  Applies Daland's phonotactic segmentation model to a corpus of Korean; analyzes performance quantitatively, with some qualitative discussion.


• Zuraw, Kie (2013). *MAP constraints. Unpublished manuscript.
  An edited version of material from an earlier, unpublished version of the 2007 Language paper (below) that did not make it into the published version. That earlier version had limited circulation, and some researchers have since found the *MAP() notation useful and wished for a fuller explanation to cite than the very brief one found in the 2007 paper.


• Zuraw, Kie (2010). A model of lexical variation and the grammar with application to Tagalog nasal substitution. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 28(2): 417-472.
  Pre-print version
  Examines variation in the application of a phonological rule. Argues for the psychological reality of regularities in the rule's distribution and proposes a model of grammar that encodes the regularities but defers to lexical entries. Compares the rule's behavior cross-linguistically to the factorial typology of the proposed constraint set.


• Zuraw, Kie (2009). Treatments of weakness in phonological theory. In Donka Minkova (ed.) Phonological Weakness in English. Palgrave Macmillan. Pp. 9-28.
  A survey.


• Hayes, Bruce, Kie Zuraw, Péter Siptár, and Zsuzsa Cziráky Londe (2009). Natural and Unnatural Constraints in Hungarian Vowel Harmony. Language 85: 822-863.
  Pre-print version and supplemental materials
  Tests whether Hungarian speakers apply phonologically unmotivated regularities in the Hungarian lexicon to novel words.


• Zuraw, Kie (2009). Frequency influences on rule application within and across words. Proceedings of CLS (Chicago Linguistic Society) 43.
  Pre-print version
  Examines representations of tapping (d -> r) in a written corpus of Tagalog/Filipino. Argues that the grammar restricts where tapping can and cannot occur, but where the grammar allows variation, word and morpheme frequency play roles. Proposes a model in which the outcome of lexical retrieval (whole-word or synthetic) is available to the grammar.


• Zuraw, Kie and Yu-An Lu (2009). Diverse repairs for multiple labial consonants. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 27. Pp. 197-224.
  Pre-print version
  Surveys the diverse ways in which Western Austronesian languages handle the addition of the infix -um- to a stem that already contains a labial consonant--a case of McCarthy's "homogeneity of process, heterogeneity of target".


• Zuraw, Kie (2007). The role of phonetic knowledge in phonological patterning: Corpus and survey evidence from Tagalog. Language 83. Pp. 277-316.
  Pre-print version
  Argues that Tagalog speakers extend the language's infixing morphology to stems beginning with novel consonant clusters in a way that is consistent with cross-linguistic, phonetically grounded patterns--but, unlike those patterns, difficult to explain as misperception. These new data are taken as evidence in favor of a role for phonetic knowledge in phonological patterning.


• Zuraw, Kie (2006). Using the web as a phonological corpus: a case study from Tagalog. EACL-2006: Proceedings of the 11th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics/Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Web As Corpus. Pp. 59-66.
  Pre-print version
  Describes the construction of a written corpus of Tagalog from the web and how it can be used to investigate phonological phenomena. Focus is on intervocalic tapping.


• Zuraw, Kie (2006). Language change, probabilistic models of. In Ken Brown, editor, The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition. Boston: Elsevier, 349-357.


• Zuraw, Kie (2003). Optimality Theory in linguistics. In Michael Arbib, editor, Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks, 2nd editon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pp. 819-822.
  Introduction to OT for the non-linguist cognitive scientist.


• Zuraw, Kie (2003). Probability in language change. In Rens Bod, Jennifer Hay, Stefanie Jannedy, editors, Probabilistic Linguistics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pp. 139-176.
  Overview of the role of probability in the study of language change: probability as a tool for determining language relatedness; changes in probabilities over time; the role of item frequency in change; the effect of language agents' behavior in a probabilistic environment on change.
  References are in a separate file.


• Zuraw, Kie (2002). Aggressive reduplication. Phonology 19. Pp. 395-439.
  Pre-print version
  Argues that there is a purely phonological drive for words to be interpreted as reduplicated. (Replaces earlier manuscript version.)


• Zuraw, Kie (2002). Vowel Reduction in Palauan Reduplicants. In Proceedings of AFLA 8: The Eighth Meeting of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 44. Pp. 385-398.
  The way unstressed vowels reduce in Palauan reduplicants suggests that the reduplicant has access to the lexical entry.


• Curtin, Suzanne and Kie Zuraw (2002). Explaining Constraint Demotion in a Developing System. In Anna H.-J. Do, Laura Domínguez, and Aimee Johansen, editors, BUCLD 26: Proceedings of the 26th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Cascadilla Press.
  Demonstrates how the gradual climb of a faithfulness constraint over a series of markedness constraints, under Boersma's Gradual Learning Algorithm, accounts for learners' variable and stage-like behavior, using truncation in Dutch as a case study.


• Zuraw, Kie (2000). Patterned Exceptions in Phonology. Ph.D. dissertation, UCLA.
  Analyzes some regularities in the distribution of exceptions in Tagalog. Argues that they are part of the language system, and shows how they can be learned, represented, and used in speaking and listening. Gives a computational model of how speaker-hearer interaction shapes the lexicon.


• Zuraw, Kie (1999). Regularities in the Derived Lexicon. University of Alberta Papers in Experimental and Theoretical Linguistics 6: 97-105.
  Written version of a talk at the University of Alberta Workshop on the Lexicon in Phonetics and Phonology. Discusses how regularities in the distribution of exceptions are encoded in the grammar.


• Zuraw, Kie (1996). Floating Phonotactics: Infixation and Reduplication in Tagalog Loanwords. M.A. thesis, UCLA.
  Shows how loanwords can force speakers to make decisions about constraints whose ranking was previously irrelevant. Finds evidence for default ranking of markedness >> faithfulness. (equations in Appendix B are illegible, but main arguments can be followed without them)

Past PhD (co-)advisees, and currently dissertating ones

• Jake Aziz, dissertation in progress, co-advised with Sun-Ah Jun
• Anissa Gladney, dissertation in progress
• Jinyoung Jo, dissertation in progress
• Zhongshi Andy Xu, dissertation in progress
• S. Blake Lehman, 2024 dissertation "Topics in Avatime phonology"" (co-advised with Harold Torrence)
• Adeline Tan, 2024 dissertation "Learning hidden structure: derived environment effects and the richness of the base"
• Noah Elkins, 2023 dissertation The interplay of syntax and prosody in Mam (co-advised with Harold Torrence)
• Jinhee Lee, 2019 Applied Linguistics dissertation The organization of institutional interaction in a radio counseling call-in show (co-advised with John Heritage)
• Eleanor Glewwe, 2019 dissertation Bias in Phonotactic Learning: Experimental Studies of Phonotactic Implicationals.
• Isabelle Lin, 2019 dissertation Functional Load, Perception, and the Learning of Phonological Alternations (co-advised with Megha Sundara)
• Jesse Zymet, 2018 dissertation Lexical propensities in phonology: corpus and experimental evidence, grammar, and learning (co-advised with Bruce Hayes)
• Yu Tanaka, 2017 dissertation The Sound Pattern of Japanese Surnames (co-advised with Bruce Hayes).
• Adam Chong, 2017 dissertation On the Relationship between Phonotactic Learning and Alternation Learning (co-advised with Megha Sundara)
• Dustin Bowers, 2015 dissertation A System for Morpho-Phonological Learning and its Consequences for Language Change (co-advised with Bruce Hayes)
• Kevin Ryan, 2011 dissertation Gradient Weight in Phonology (co-advised with Bruce Hayes).
• Ingvar Löfstedt, 2010 dissertation Phonetic Effects in Swedish Phonology: Allomorphy and Paradigms (co-advised with Bruce Hayes)
• Katie Tang, 2008 dissertation The Phonology and Phonetics of Consonant-Tone Interaction (co-advised with Russ Schuh)
• Andy Martin, 2007 dissertation The Evolving Lexicon,
• Jeffrey Heinz, 2007 dissertation Inductive Learning of Phonotactic Patterns (co-advised with Ed Stabler),

Teaching and course materials

Articles about teaching and learning

• Zuraw, Kie (2022). Four inclusive practices for the phonology classroom. Proceedings of the 2021 Annual Meeting on Phonology. Ed. by Peter Jurgec, Liisa Duncan, Emily Elfner, Yoonjung Kang, Alexei Kochetov, Brittney K. O'Neill, Avery Ozburn, Keren Rice, Nathan Sanders, Jessamyn Schertz, Nate Shaftoe, and Lisa Sullivan.


• Zuraw, Kie, Ann M. Aly, Isabelle Lin, and Adam J. Royer (2019). Gotta catch 'em all: skills grading in undergraduate linguistics. Language: Teaching Linguistics 95(4): e406-e427.
  supplementary materials, including syllabi and homework instructions
  pre-print version
  How and why we implemented skills grading in undergraduate phonetics and phonology courses.

Past UCLA courses

• Intro to General Phonetics (Ling 103, undergraduate)
  • Sociophonetics (honors seminar for Ling 103)
  • Forensic phonetics (honors seminar for Ling 103)


• Phonology I (Ling 120A, undergraduate)


• Phonology II (Ling 165A, undergraduate)


• Sounds of English and Spanish in Contact in Los Angeles (Ling 191A, undergraduate Variable Topics Research Seminar)
  Co-taught with Prof. Ji Young Kim


• Phonological Theory I (Ling 200A, graduate)


• Phonological Theory II (Ling 201A, graduate)


• Field Methods I & II: Malagasy (Ling 210A & 210B, graduate)
  Co-taught with Hilda Koopman


• Field Methods I & II: Javanese
  Co-taught with Hilda Koopman


• Field Methods I & II: Samoan
  Co-taught with Hilda Koopman


• Field Methods I & II: Tongan
  Co-taught with Hilda Koopman


• Phonological Theory III (Ling 219, graduate)


• Loanword phonology (Ling 251A/B, Topics in Phonetics and Phonology, graduate)


• The prosodic word (Ling 251A/B)
  Includes annotated bibliography as of 2006


• Lexical access and the phonology of morphologically complex words (Ling 251A/B)


• Variation in phonology, with Bruce Hayes (Ling 251A/B). Lecture handouts are in a zip file near the top of the page.


• Intonation field methods, Tagalog, with Sun-Ah Jun (Ling 251A/B)


• Speech planning and phonological grammar (Ling 251A/B)


• Sign language phonology for phonology teachers (Ling 251A/B)
  Contact me for access to example bank


• Phonetics and phonology of code-switching/code-mixing (Ling 251A/B).


• English and Spanish in contact in Los Angeles; Community-engaged pedagogy (Ling 251A/B).


• Statistics practicum using R
  Co-taught with Megha Sundara and Kristine Yu (Ling 254A: Topics in Linguistics, graduate)


• Racial justice in linguistics
  syllabus for first half
  syllabus for second half (Ling 266, Seminar in Sociolinguistics, graduate)

Past special courses outside UCLA

• The Phonological Status of Morphologically Complex Words (Summer 2007)
  Short (7-session) course taught at the LSA Institute at Stanford University
• Introduction to Phonology (Summer 2007)
  Short (4-session) course taught at EALing, Institut Jean-Nicod
• English Phonetics (Summer 2011)
  Taught at the Chonnam National University International Summer School
• Quantitative models of phonological variation (fall 2012)
  Seoul National University" block seminar
  Studies in Phonology 2
• Modeling phonological variation (scroll down that page for slides) (2013)
  EILIN Winter School in Formal Linguistics
  

Free software

maxent.ot, by Connor Mayer, Adeline Tan, and Kie Zuraw (2022)

• This is an R package, now available on CRAN, for incorporating Maximum Entropy constraint grammars into your R scripts. See our AMP talk for why and how, and links to tutorial material.
  Here is the CRAN page for maxent.ot.

UCLA FeaturePad

• This is a program I wrote that helps phonology students learn about features (phonetic characteristics that define groups of sounds that pattern together as a "natural class"). The software lets you select natural classes and perform feature changes; it detects contradictions and redundancies.
  The original version is no longer supported. You can use a Java version by Floris van Vugt, called Pheatures, and a web version is in the works.
  Screencast video showing how to use Pheatures

Ephemera and materials for the public

Dreaming in Taglish

• Here are my slides
• A talk about mixing languages, especially Taglish and Franglais.
• Part of the 2017-2018 talk series The Philippines and its Elsewheres, presented by the UCLA Department of Asian American Studies, UCLA Asian American Studies Center, and UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies.

"The one with all the sports metaphors"

• Here are my slides
• Introductory remarks for a session on Rule ordering and the cycle.
• From the 2023 M100 conference in honor of Morris Halle

What songwriters' choices can tell us about language: rhythms in Filipino pop music

• Here is a video of the talk
• A five-minute talk version of a soon-to-appear article with Paolo Roca
• From the Five-Minute Linguist event at the LSA's 2024 annual meeting

Webtoon: The Comic Guide to Linguistics