Andries W. Coetzee

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Andries Coetzee

Associate Professor

Department of Linguistics
University of Michigan
440 Lorch Hall
611 Tappan Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1220

Office Location(s): 419 Lorch
Phone: 734.764.0353
Fax: 734.936.3406
coetzee@umich.edu
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  • Fields of Study
    • Phonetics, phonology, laboratory phonology
  • About

    Andries Coetzee is an Associate Professor of Linguistics. His research interests cover formal phonological theory, phonetics, speech processing, and the interface between these research areas.  In terms of phonological theory, he focuses on phonological variation, and on how current constraint-based models of phonological grammar (Optimality Theory and Harmonic Grammar) can be adapted to account for variable phenomena.  A particular focus of this research is on how to combine grammatical and non-grammatical factors that contribute to variation into one integrated model.  His phonetic research has focused on the acoustic description of Southern African languages (both Afrikaans and Bantu languages).  He also collaborates with colleagues in the department on topics related to speech perception, with a focus on how phonological grammar impacts speech perception and processing.

    Professor Coetzee regularly teaches phonology, both at the undergraduate and graduate level, as well as several of the department’s introductory level undergraduate offerings. He has recently supervised graduate students Michael Marlo (now on the faculty at the University of Missouri), “The verbal tonology of Lumarachi and Lunyala-West: two dialects of Lulyia” (2007), and Miyeon Ahn, “The interplay of phonetics and phonology in cross-language speech perception: the case of English loans in Korean” (2011). He also advised the undergraduate honors theses by Ania Musial, “Overcoming the subset problem” (2009), and Katherine Barcy “Parlez-vous Anglais?: rhythmic transfer in French accented English” (2010) [Recipient of the Matt Alexander Award for Best Undergraduate Honors Thesis in the Department of Linguistics.]

    Andries Coetzee has served on several committees in Linguistics, including the Executive Committee, the Admissions Committee, and the Graduate Committee.  He is a member of the University of Michigan African Presidential Scholar Program (UMAPS) evaluation committee, a member of the NSF Graduate Fellowship Evaluation Panel, and co-director of the 2013 LSA Institute.  He is also an editorial board member of Phonology.

    Selected publications
    • 2008 Weighted constraints and gradient restrictions on place co-occurrence in Muna and Arabic (second author; with Joe Pater). Natural Language and Linguistic Theory.
    • 2008 Grammaticality and ungrammaticality in phonology. Language.
    • 2009 Learning lexical indexation.  Phonology.
    • 2010 Gradient well-formedness in Harmonic Grammar: phonological performance as a window on phonological competence. Journal of the Phonetic Society of Japan.
    • 2010 Phonetically grounded phonology and sound change: the case of Tswana labial plosives (second author; with Rigardt Pretorius). Journal of Phonetics.
    • 2011 The place of variation in phonological theory (second author; with Joe Pater). In John Goldsmith, Jason Riggle and Alan Yu, eds., The Handbook of Phonological Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.
    • 2011 Syllables in speech processing: evidence from perceptual epenthesis. In Chuck Cairns and Eric Raimy, eds., Handbook of the Syllable. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
    • (To appear) Frequency biases in phonological variation (second author; with Shigeto Kawahara). Natural Language and Linguistic Theory.
    • (To appear) Variation: where laboratory and theoretical phonology meet. In Abigail C. Cohn, Cécile Fougeron, and Marie K. Huffman, eds., Oxford Handbook of Laboratory Phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Education
    • Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2004