Dr Rosey Billington
Areas of expertise
- Linguistics 2004
- Laboratory Phonetics And Speech Science 200404
- Linguistic Structures (Incl. Grammar, Phonology, Lexicon, Semantics) 200408
- Language In Culture And Society (Sociolinguistics) 200405
- Pacific Languages 200320
Research interests
My main research interest is the intersection of experimental phonetics and language documentation, and I am particularly interested in languages of the Pacific, Africa, and Australia. My current primary research focus is on the phonetics of Nafsan and related Southern Oceanic languages of central Vanuatu. I have also undertaken research on the phonetics and phonology of Lopit, an Eastern Nilotic language of South Sudan. I maintain an interest in research on the phonetic characteristics of English varieties in Australia, and in creole languages of the Pacific and Africa.
Biography
I am a Lecturer in Linguistics in the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics within the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University. I hold a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Melbourne, and a BA (Hons) in Linguistics from Monash University. Before joining the ANU in 2021, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, based in the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne and affiliated with the University of Melbourne Phonetics Laboratory and the Research Unit for Indigenous Language.
Available student projects
I welcome proposals for Honours/Masters/PhD research related to the topics noted above under 'Research interests', such as:
- Phonetics and phonology of Oceanic languages of Vanuatu
- Phonetics and phonology of Nilotic languages of East Africa
- Phonetics and phonology of contact languages in Melanesia
- Sociophonetics of English varieties in Australia and the Pacific
- Phonetic and phonological typology
Please note I am not able to take on any additional supervision for 2023.
Current student projects
Naijing Liu, PhD Thesis (in progress), Lexical and prosodic phonology of Tsum, Australian National University. [associate supervisor]
Shubo Li, PhD Thesis (in progress), Title TBC, Australian National University.
Thomas Powell-Davies, PhD Thesis (in progress), Title TBC, Australian National University.
Sun Chao, Masters Thesis (in progress), Title TBC, Australian National University.
Zhe Yang, Masters Thesis (in progress), Title TBC, Australian National University.
Yuchen Li, Honours Thesis (in progress), Title TBC, Australian National University.
Past student projects
Shubo Li, Honours Thesis (2022), A phonological sketch of the Kufo language, Australian National University.
Thomas Powell-Davies, Honours Thesis (2022), Exploring Tasmania's place in Australian English regional variation through diphthongs, Australian National University.
Jieping Ma, Masters Thesis (2022), Asymmetrical extension patterns of kin-based address terms in Dali, Australian National University.
Coralie Cram, Honours Thesis (2020), Post-lexical intonation in Bislama, University of Melbourne. [co-supervisor]
Publications
- Krajinovic, Ana, Billington, Rosey, Emil, Lionel, Kaltapau, Gray and Thieberger, Nick 2022, 'Community-Led Documentation of Nafsan (Erakor, Vanuatu)', Human language technology: Challenges for computer science and linguistics, ed. Zygmunt Vetulani, Patrick Paroubek, Marek Kubis, Springer, New York, pp. 112-128.
- Billington, Rosey, Stoakes, Hywel & Thieberger, Nick 2021, 'The Pacific Expansion: Optimizing phonetic transcription of archival corpora', Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2021, ed. Hermanský, Hynek, Cernocký, Honza, Burget, Lukáš, Lamel, Lori, Scharenborg, Odette & Motlicek, Petr, International Speech Communication Association, Brno, Czechia, pp. 4029 - 4033.
- Billington, Rosey, Thieberger, Nick & Fletcher, Janet 2021, 'Nafsan', Journal of the International Phonetic Association, FirstView, pp. 1-21.
- Billington, Rosey, Fletcher, Janet, Thieberger, Nick & Volchok, Ben 2020, 'Acoustic evidence for right-edge prominence in Nafsan', Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 147, no. 4, pp. 2829-2844.
- Billington, Rosey, Thieberger, Nick & Fletcher, Janet 2020, 'Phonetic evidence for phonotactic change in Nafsan (South Efate)', Italian Journal of Linguistics (Special issue: "The dynamics of vowel reduction and loss: Phonetic mechanisms and phonological outcomes"), vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 125-150.
- Moodie, Jonathan & Billington, Rosey 2020, A grammar of Lopit: An Eastern Nilotic language of South Sudan , Brill, Leiden ; Boston.
- Fletcher, Janet, Billington, Rosey & Thieberger, Nick 2019, 'Prosodic marking of focus in Nafsan', Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 2019, ed. Calhoun, Sasha, Escudero, Paola, Tabain, Marija & Warren, Paul, Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association, Canberra, Australia, pp. 3787-3791.
- Krajinovic, Ana, Billington, Rosey, Emil, Lionel, Kaltapau, Gray & Thieberger, Nick, 2019, 'Building capacity for community-led documentation in Erakor, Vanuatu', Human language technologies as a challenge for computer science and linguistics — 2019. ed. Vetulani, Zygmunt & Paroubek, Patrick, Wydawnictwo Nauka i Innowacje, Poznan, Poland, pp. 185-189.
- Billington, Rosey, Fletcher, Janet, Thieberger, Nick & Volchok, Ben 2018, 'Acoustic correlates of prominence in Nafsan', Proceedings of the 17th Australasian International Speech Science and Technology Conference, ed. Epps, Julien, Wolfe, Joe, Smith, John & Jones, Caroline, Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association, Sydney, Australia, pp. 137-140.
- Kim, Hyejeong & Billington, Rosey 2018, 'Pronunciation and Comprehension in English as a Lingua Franca Communication: Effect of L1 Influence in International Aviation Communication', Applied Linguistics, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 135-158.
- Maxwell, Olga, Payne, Elinor & Billington, Rosey 2018, 'Homogeneity vs. heterogeneity in Indian English: Investigating influences of L1 on f0 range', Proceedings of the 2018 International Speech Communication Association, ed. Yegnanarayana, B, Sekhar, C Chandra, Narayanan, Shrikanth, Umesh, S, Prasanna, S R M, International Speech Communication Association, Hyderabad, India, pp. 2191-2195.
- Billington, Rosey 2017, The phonetics and phonology of the Lopit language. PhD thesis, The University of Melbourne.
- Billington, Rosey 2016, 'Temporal correlates of Lopit singleton and geminate glides', Proceedings of the 16th Australasian International Speech Science and Technology Conference, ed. Carignan, Chris & Tyler, Michael D, Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association, Parramatta, Australia, pp. 265-268.
- Billington, Rosey 2015, 'Lexical tone in Lopit', Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, ed. The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015, International Phonetic Association, Glasgow, Scotland, paper 0755 pp. 1-4.
- Billington, Rosey 2014, ''Advanced Tongue Root' in Lopit: Acoustic and ultrasound evidence', Proceedings of the 15th Australasian International Speech Science and Technology Conference, ed. Hay, Jennifer & Parnell, Emma, The Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association, Christchurch, New Zealand, pp. 119-122.
- Loakes, Debbie, Moses, Karin, Wigglesworth, Gillian, Simpson, Jane & Billington, Rosey 2013, 'Children's language input: A study of a remote multilingual Indigenous Australian community', Multilingua, vol. 32, no. 5, pp. 683-711.
- Wigglesworth, Gillian & Billington, Rosey 2013, 'Teaching creole-speaking children: Issues, concerns, and resolutions for the classroom', Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 234-249.
- Wigglesworth, Gillian, Billington, Rosey & Loakes, Debbie 2013, 'Creole speakers and standard language education', Language and Linguistics Compass, vol. 7, no. 7, pp. 388-397.
- Billington, Rosey 2011, 'Location, location, location: Regional characteristics and national patterns of change in the vowels of Melbourne adolescents', Australian Journal of Linguistics, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 275-303.
