Biography
Prof. Lapierre's research interests lie at the intersection of formal phonology, experimental phonetics, language documentation, and typology. Her work focuses on the sound systems of Amazonian languages of Brazil, especially languages of the Jê and Tupí-Guaraní families. She has conducted extensive in-situ fieldwork on four languages of the Jê family, namely Panãra (ISO code: kre), Mẽbêngôkre (ISO code: txu), Kajkwakhrattxi (ISO code: suy-tap), and Xavante (ISO code: xav), and on one language of the Tupí-Guaraní family, Kawaiwete (ISO code: kyz). Her research focuses on understanding the range of possible and impossible phonological processes, and how these phenomena are constrained from a physiological and/or cognitive perspective. Prof. Lapierre's work in representational phonology has provided evidence that phonological grammars makes use of subsegmental units, which are representational units smaller than the phoneme. She is particularly interested in the phonetics and phonology of nasality, and how understudied languages can contribute to our understanding of the diverse ways in which nasality can be used meaningfully in language.