
Fields of Interest
Biography

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 speech technology and second language acquisition, 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.
Research
Selected Research
- 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
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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
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- 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. DOI:10.1044/2019_JSLHR-19-00176
- 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
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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).
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- 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.
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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
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Osterhout, Lee; Wright, Richard; Allen, M. D. (2010). The psychology of linguistic form. In P.C. Hogan (Ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language Sciences.
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- Richard Wright, PI. Acoustic and Perceptual Effects of WDRC Amplification I
- 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.
- Richard Wright, PI. Acoustic and Perceptual Effects of WDRC Amplification III - Adaptation to distortion
- Richard Wright, Mari Ostendorf, Co-PIs. Modeling Idiosyncrasies of Speech Prosody for Automatic Spoken Language Processing
Research Advised: Undergraduate Honors Theses
- 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.
- Marina Oganyan. "Quantifying the Benefits of Infant Directed Speech." Honors Thesis, U of Washington, 2008/2009.
Research Advised: Graduate Dissertations
- Valerie Freeman. "The Phonetics of Stance-taking." Diss. U of Washington, 2015.
- 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.
- 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.
- Shirai Setsuko. "Lexical effects in Japanese vowel reduction." Diss. U of Washington, 2005.
- Lesley Carmichael. "Situation-Based Intonation Pattern Distribution in a Corpus of American English." Diss. U of Washington, 2005.
Research Advised: Publications
Research Advised: Graduate Masters Theses
- 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.
- 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 2023
Spring 2023
Winter 2023
Autumn 2022
Spring 2022
Winter 2022
Autumn 2021
Spring 2021
Winter 2021
Autumn 2020
Spring 2020
Winter 2020
Autumn 2019
Winter 2019
Autumn 2018
Spring 2018
Winter 2018
Autumn 2017
Spring 2017
Winter 2017
Autumn 2016
Winter 2016
Autumn 2015
Winter 2015
Autumn 2014
- LING 450 A: Introduction To Linguistic Phonetics - Course Website
- LING 550 A: Introduction To Linguistic Phonetics - Course Website
- LING 550 B: Introduction To Linguistic Phonetics - Course Website
- LING 550 C: Introduction To Linguistic Phonetics - Course Website
- LING 580 E: Problems In Linguistics - Course Website
- LING 580 F: Problems In Linguistics - Course Website
Winter 2014
- LING 450 A: Introduction To Linguistic Phonetics - Course Website
- LING 453 A: Experimental Phonetics - Course Website
- LING 550 A: Introduction To Linguistic Phonetics - Course Website
- LING 550 B: Introduction To Linguistic Phonetics - Course Website
- LING 553 A: Experimental Phonetics - Course Website
Autumn 2013
- LING 450 A: Introduction To Linguistic Phonetics - Course Website
- LING 550 A: Introduction To Linguistic Phonetics - Course Website
- LING 550 B: Introduction To Linguistic Phonetics - Course Website
- LING 550 C: Introduction To Linguistic Phonetics - Course Website
- LING 580 A: Problems In Linguistics - Course Website
- LING 580 B: Problems In Linguistics - Course Website
Resources & Related Links
Affiliations
Related News
Related News
- Chair's Welcome - September 8, 2023
- Congratulations to Professors Qi Cheng, Sharon Hargus, Naja Ferjan Ramírez and Richard Wright. - September 5, 2023
- Spring 2022 PhD Rob Squizzero - September 15, 2022
- Letter from the Chair - September 2, 2022
- UW linguists at Acoustical Society of America - January 10, 2022
- Message from Chair Richard Wright - September 3, 2021
- Alumna Lesley Carmichael - September 3, 2021
- Featured Alumnus: Steve Moran - February 19, 2021
- Faculty News - February 19, 2021
- Message from Chair Richard Wright - October 2, 2020
- PhD Candidate Laura Panfili defends her dissertation - May 19, 2018
- Esther Le Grézause Defends Dissertation Entitled "Um and Uh, and the Expression of Stance in Conversational Speech" - August 15, 2017
- Congratulations Linguistics PhD Graduate Rachael Tatman! - August 10, 2017
- The 24th Meeting of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association (AFLA) - October 8, 2016
- Colloquium in Honor of Prof. Ellen Kaisse on May 6 in Petersen Room - April 25, 2016
- Tibusungu Vayayana and Richard Wright present talk on Tsou language of Taiwan at "Language Shift in the Sinophone World" Workshop - November 13, 2015
- Julia Herschensohn completes 15-year term as Chair of Linguistics on June 30th - June 24, 2015
- Alicia Beckford Wassink gives Invited Plenary Address at Linguistics Society of America's annual meeting in Portland - December 15, 2014
- UW Linguistics PhD candidate's poster featured in ASA, AIP press release - December 4, 2014