Research

My main research interests are in phonetics and phonology, with a particular focus in prosody and refining linguistic typology. I am also interested in first- and second-language acquisition, and the ways in which the linguistic background of speakers can influence speech and perception in ways not always accounted for.

In my work, I believe it is important to prioritize the study of under-researched and minority languages, and focus on "interface" areas at the crossroads of language sound, structure, and meaning. You can read more about my research projects below.

Prosodic typology

Early acquisition

Prosody in under-researched languages

For a variety of reasons such as its suprasegmental nature, prosody presents a challenge for linguistic analysis and is comparatively neglected in language description, resulting in prosodic types like "non-stress" languages being potentially under-described. I am interested in refining prosodic typology, for instance by clarifying the prosodic status of languages that may lack word stress. As part of this work I have developed an ongoing research project to analyze word- and phrase-level prosody in Amharic (አማርኛ), a South Semitic language of Ethiopia.

There are varied claims about Amharic prosody, including that the language may lack word stress. I have carried out fieldwork studies in Ethiopia and have worked with communities in Massachusetts to explore questions relating to stress, intonation, and prosodic prominence in Amharic, presenting this work at various conferences and venues. A synthesis of my Amharic work up to 2024 can be found in Kellogg & Barnes (2024).

56th Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL 56) in Minneapolis, 2025

Invited talk at the University of
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2025

Acquisition and phonetic drift

A common thread in my research is an interest in the varied effects of multilingual acquisition on speech and perception. A growing body of work has demonstrated that early stages of first- and second-language acquisition can have surprisingly far-reaching effects in an individual's linguistic system.

Talk at the 63rd Annual Meeting
of the Psychonomic Society in Boston, 2022.

I led a phonetic drift research project in collaboration with the Phonetics, Acquisition, and Multilingualism Lab (PAMLab) (now at City University of Hong Kong) in which I assessed the earliest amount of exposure to an unfamiliar consonant contrast in Tagalog that would effect a change in phonetic category judgments in English. This work was published (Kellogg & Chang 2023) in a special issue of the journal Languages.

In addition, I have presented work on first-language acquisition in Kabyle Berber (Gaoua, Kellogg, and Ray 2022) at the Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD).