Professor and Department Chair
Adjunct Professor Speech and Hearing Sciences
Contact Information
GUG 414B
Office Hours
Wednesday 1:00 - 2:00 and by appointment https://washington.zoom.us/j/92429826494
Biography
PhD 1996, Linguistics, University of California at Los Angeles
BA 1986, French and African Studies, Michigan State University
Curriculum Vitae
(348.22 KB)
Prof. Wright is director of the Linguistic Phonetics Laboratory and Chair of the Department of Linguistics. His primary research interest is in understanding sources of systematic variation in the production and perception of language, and how it relates to language universals and language structure (i.e., Language), prosody, and discourse. As part of this research he is interested in describing the phonetics of endangered and under-described languages. His research contains translational components in spoken language technology, as well as clinical applications related to hearing loss and perception under conditions of distortion.
In his teaching he incorporates readings and resources from BIPOC scholars as a means to better reflect the diversity of their respective sub-fields and to amplify the voices of scholars from underrepresented groups. He also draws on examples from underrepresented populations and genders, languages, and stigmatized dialects and sociolects to help make students aware of the vast diversity of human language.
Awards and Honors
Fellow Acoustical Society of America
Research
Selected Research
- Oganyan, M., Levow, G., Squizzero, R., Ahn, E., Ng, S., Deaton, E. & Wright, R. (2024). Investigating the acoustic fidelity of vowels across remote recording methods. Linguistics Vanguard, 10(1), pp. 63-79. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2022-0169
- Winn, Matthew B.; Wright, Richard A. (2022). Reconsidering commonly used stimuli in speech perception experiments. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 152, pp. 1394-1493. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0013415
- Winn, Matthew B.; Wright, Richard A., Tucker, Benjamin V. (2023). Reconsidering classic ideas in speech communication. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 153, pp. 1623-1625. https://doi: 10.1121/10.0017487
- Oganyan, Marina; Wright, Richard (2022). The Role of the Root in Spoken Word Recognition in Hebrew: An Auditory Gating Paradigm. Brain Sciences, 12, 750 https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci12060750
- Souza, Pamela; Ellis, Gregory; Marks, Kendra; Wright, Richard; Gallun, Frederick (2021). Does the speech cue profile affect response to amplitude envelope distortion? Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_JSLHR-20-00481
- Oganyan, Marina; Wright, Richard; McCullough, Elizabeth (2021). Comparing Segmental and Prosodic Contributions to Speech Accent. In R. Wayland (Ed.), Second Language Speech Learning: Theoretical and Empirical Progress (pp. 337-349). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108886901.014
- Richard Wright, PI. Acoustic and Perceptual Effects of WDRC Amplification III - Adaptation to distortion
- Souza, Pamela; Gallun, Frederick; Wright, Richard (2020). Contributions to speech-cue weighting in older adults with impaired hearing. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 63, pp. 334–344. https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_JSLHR-19-00176
- Fulop, Sean; Wright, Rrichard (2020). Chapter 7 Recording and Measuring Acoustic Attributes of Clicks. In Bonny Sands (Ed.), Click Consonants. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, pp. 241-274. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004424357_008 Download PDF
- Wright, Richard; Mansfield, Courtney; Panfili, Laura (2019). Voice quality types and uses in North American English, Anglophonia, 27 https://doi.org/10.4000/anglophonia.1952
- Richard Wright, PI. Acoustic and Perceptual Effects of WDRC Amplification II
- Won Jong Ho, Tremblay Kelly, Clinard Christopher G., Wright Richard A., Sagi Elad, and Svirsky Mario (2016). The neural encoding of formant frequencies contributing to vowel identification in normal-hearing listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 139 (1), 1-11. DOI: 10.1121/1.4931909
- Gina-Anne Levow, Valerie Freeman, Alena Hrynkevich, Mari Ostendorf, Richard Wright, Julian Chan, Yi Luan, Trang Tran. (2014) Recognition of Stance Strength and Polarity in Spontaneous Speech. In Proceedings of SLT-2014 (to appear). Download PDF
- Souza, P., Gehani, N., Wright, R., and McCloy, D. (2013). The advantage of knowing the talker, Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, Volume 24, Number 8, pp. 689-700.
- Henke, Eric; Kaisse, Ellen; Wright, Richard (2012) Is the Sonority Sequencing Principle an epiphenomenon? In S. Parker (Ed.) The Sonority Controversy. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 65-100.https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110261523 Download PDF
- Osterhout, Lee; Wright, Richard; Allen, M. D. (2010). The psychology of linguistic form. In P.C. Hogan (Ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language Sciences. Download PDF
- Richard Wright, PI. Acoustic and Perceptual Effects of WDRC Amplification I
- Richard Wright, Mari Ostendorf, Co-PIs. Modeling Idiosyncrasies of Speech Prosody for Automatic Spoken Language Processing
- Jeffrey Bilmes, Katrin Kirchhoff, Howard Chizeck, James Landay, Patrica Dowden, Richard Wright, Co-PIs. The Vocal Joystick.
- Mari Ostendorf, Richard Wright, Gina Levow, Co-PIs. ATAROS Project: Automatic Tagging and Recognition of Stance.
- Richard Wright, PI. PHOIBLE: Phonetics Information Base and Lexicon.
Research Advised
- Li, Qiuyuan. "Prosodic Focus Shifting in Echo Questions Regarding Lexical Tones in Mandarin". Honors Thesis, U of Washington, 2017/2018.
- Castro, Lydia. "The Acoustics of Deceit". Honors Thesis, U of Washington, 2016/2017.
- Valerie Freeman. "The Phonetics of Stance-taking." Diss. U of Washington, 2015.
- Freeman, Valerie (2014). Hyperarticulation as a signal of stance. Journal of Phonetics 45, 1-11.
- Daniel R McCloy. “Prosody, Intelligibility and Familiarity in Speech Perception.” Diss. U of Washington, 2013.
- Steven Moran. "Phonetics Information Base and Lexicon." Diss. U of Washington, 2012.
- Valerie Freeman. "Using acoustic measures of hyperarticulation to quantify novelty and evaluation in a corpus of political talk shows." MA Thesis. U of Washington, 2010.
- Kelley J Kilanski. "The Effects of Token Frequency and Phonological Neighborhood Density on Native and Non-Native English Speech Production." Diss. U of Washington, 2009.
- Marina Oganyan. "Quantifying the Benefits of Infant Directed Speech." Honors Thesis, U of Washington, 2008/2009.
- Lesley Carmichael. "Situation-Based Intonation Pattern Distribution in a Corpus of American English." Diss. U of Washington, 2005.
- Shirai Setsuko. "Lexical effects in Japanese vowel reduction." Diss. U of Washington, 2005.
- Jessica Giesler. "A conflicting-cue study examining the relative strengths of consonant transition cues as affected by vowel, noise and position." MA Thesis. U of Washington, 2003/2004.
- Sylvia Tur. "Perception of a non-native language contrast: voiced and voiceless stops as perceived by Tamil speakers." MA Thesis. U of Washington, 2003/2004.
- Miriam Stone-Garcia. "Hemispheric Lateralization for Linguistic Intonation: A Dichotic Listening Study." MA Thesis. U of Washington, 2004/2005.
- Haewon Cho. "Intonation transfer in second language acquisition: An analysis of English intonation by Korean speakers." MA Thesis. U of Washington, 2003/2004.
Courses Taught
Autumn 2025
Spring 2025
Winter 2025
Autumn 2024
Spring 2024
Winter 2024
Autumn 2023
Spring 2023
Winter 2023
Autumn 2022
Spring 2022
Winter 2022
Resources & Related Links
Affiliations
Home Department
Professional Affiliations
Acoustical Society of America, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Association for Laboratory Phonology, International Phonetic Association, Linguistic Society of America