34.1272, Rising Star: Erika Sajtós

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-34-1272. Wed Apr 19 2023. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 34.1272, Rising Star: Erika Sajtós

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Editor for this issue: Lauren Perkins <lauren at linguistlist.org>
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Date: 18-Apr-2023
From: Lauren Perkins [lauren at linguistlist.org]
Subject: Rising Star: Erika Sajtós


During our annual Fund Drive, we like to feature undergraduate and MA
students who have gone above and beyond the classroom to participate
in the wider field of linguistics. Selected nominees exemplify a
commitment to not only academic performance, but also to the field of
linguistics and principles of scientific inquiry. Since this year’s
Fund Drive theme is Future tense, we are especially thankful to be
able to highlight undergraduate and MA students who are emerging as
the future leaders in our field.

Today’s Rising Star is Erika Sajtós, an MA student at PPCU Budapest /
Pannon Veszprém (Hungary). Erika was nominated by her adviser, Katalin
Balogné Bérces. Katalin writes:

Erika was my supervisee for her BA thesis, which she wrote in the
summer holidays before her third year. That was because she was, and
still is, carrying out her studies as a part-timer (or: correspondence
student), i.e., attending classes on Saturdays, and working full-time
(and managing her family) otherwise. She defended her thesis
successfully, and immediately she started developing it into a more
comprehensive project. Without enrolling in any training programmes,
she carried on researching for a year (incl. learning how to use
Praat, all on her own!), simply because she found enjoyment in it, and
I was happy to keep advising her. She's participated in a number of
conferences now, including TWIST
(https://conference.studieverenigingtwist.nl/2021/student-speakers),
Symposium on Historical Phonology (http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/symposium-o
n-historical-phonology/pdf/eshp5-final-prog.pdf), and BICLCE 2022
(https://biclce22.ff.uni-lj.si/programme/). She published an early
version of her project/paper in
https://essenglish.org/messenger/vol-30-1-summer-2021/. Currently,
she's a (part-time) MA student in English Studies.
_______________________

When asked about the topics she sees emerging as important or
especially interesting in the field of linguistics, and how she hopes
to contribute in the future, Erika writes:

As Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French philosopher and writer said
‘Accent is the soul of language: it gives to it both feeling and
truth.’ Indeed, the way how speakers exploit variation to project
their identity has always amazed me. Also, I am equally excited about
language change, or more specifically, changes in pronunciation – not
just the process itself, but the motivation and causes behind it.
Thus, among the different areas of linguistics, I am particularly
interested in sociophonetics, a young branch of linguistics. Modern
computational tools of phonetics such as the Praat software, used for
acoustic analysis, can be combined with sociolinguistics, and
important data regarding social variation on various levels can be
gained. Additionally, these tools can be used in historical
linguistics to study the development of languages, opening the way to
use new methods in this field.

The use of modern phonetic tools in historical linguistics makes it
possible to detect changes in pronunciation and determine when they
occurred, which is important from a theoretical point of view, for the
reconstruction of an earlier form of a language. It is especially true
in the case of relatively young language varieties such as New Zealand
English, the youngest inner circle variety of English. As recordings
of New Zealand speakers are available from the early stages of this
variety, it provides the opportunity to track how its pronunciation
changed over time. With the worldwide spread of English, new Expanding
Circle varieties emerge, and by applying newly developed phonetic
methods in historical linguistics, these new varieties and the way in
which they evolved can be described more accurately than before.

I find sociophonetics, the interface of sociolinguistics and
experimental phonetics, even more fascinating because the results of
acoustic measurements complement the existing knowledge of
sociolinguistics allowing researchers to explore the relationship
between language variation and identity, and variation in language
change in general. As languages constantly change, the usage potential
of acoustic measurements as tools has great importance. Currently, I
am about to finish my project, in which I investigate social variation
in New Zealand English in different registers within the same social
class, and also how linguistic norms affect the patterns in these
registers and the social connotation of vowel sounds.

While I am working on a project, new and intriguing research questions
arise, showing the new direction of my research. While previously I
focused on vowels, in my next project, I am planning to examine
changes in the realisation of consonant sounds in different periods of
New Zealand English in the speech of male and female speakers. I
intend to investigate these changes from both a historical and
sociolinguistic point of view using the methods of experimental
phonetics focusing on whether men and women had a shared constraint
hierarchy from the beginning or whether it emerged only at a later
stage. I am planning to continue my studies in the PhD programme in
theoretical linguistics and investigate this issue during those years.
___________________________

The LINGUIST List looks forward to continuing to serve the linguistics
community, including its up-and-coming stars, for years to come. You
can contribute to our Fund Drive here:
https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate



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