Position: Research Officer in Linguistics (German)

Email: f.breit@bangor.ac.uk

Phone: +44 (0)1248 388230

Location: 37-41 College Road

  • PhD: Linguistics
    University College London, 2019
  • MA: Linguistics with specialisation in Phonology
    University College London, 2014
  • BA: Linguistics
    2012

2023

  • PublishedElements, Government and Licensing: Developments in phonology
    Breit, F. (ed.), Yoshida, Y. (ed.) & Youngberg, C. (ed.), Aug 2023, London: UCL Press.
    Research output: Book/Report › Book › peer-review
  • PublishedL’ART Research Assistant
    Breit, F., Tamburelli, M. & Gruffydd, I., 3 May 2023
    Research output: Non-textual form › Software
  • PublishedMelody and segmental representation: a brief introduction
    Breit, F., 14 Aug 2023, Elements, Government and Licensing: Developments in phonology. Breit, F., Yoshida, Y. & Youngberg, C. (eds.). UCL Press
    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review
  • PublishedPrimitives of Phonological Structure
    Breit, F. (ed.), Botma, B. (ed.), van 't Veer, M. (ed.) & van Oostendorp, M. (ed.), 9 Jun 2023, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 400 p. (Oxford Studies in Phonology and Phonetics)
    Research output: Book/Report › Book › peer-review
  • PublishedPrinciples and parameters in phonology: an introduction and overview
    Youngberg, C., Yoshida, Y. & Breit, F., 14 Aug 2023, Elements, Government and Licensing: Developments in phonology. Breit, F., Yoshida, Y. & Youngberg, C. (eds.). UCL Press
    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review
  • PublishedProsodic structure and recursion: a brief introduction
    Youngberg, C. & Breit, F., 14 Aug 2023, Elements, Government and Licensing: Developments in phonology. Breit, F., Yoshida, Y. & Youngberg, C. (eds.). London: UCL Press
    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review
  • PublishedSets of (sets of) elements
    Breit, F., 14 Aug 2023, Elements, Government and Licensing: Developments in phonology. Breit, F., Yoshida, Y. & Youngberg, C. (eds.). London: UCL Press
    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review
  • UnpublishedThe L' ART Research Assistant: A digital toolkit for bilingualism and language attitude research
    Breit, F., Tamburelli, M., Gruffydd, I. & Brasca, L., 4 May 2023, (Unpublished).
    Research output: Working paper
  • PublishedThe structure and content of phonological primitives
    van 't Veer, M., Botma, B., Breit, F. & van Oostendorp, M., 9 Jun 2023, Primitives of Phonological Structure. Breit, F., Botma, B., van 't Veer, M. & van Oostendorp, M. (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 1-36 (Oxford Studies in Phonology and Phonetics).
    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review

2020

2017

2014

2013

2012

2023

  • Toward a metric estimating the impact of initial consonant mutation on neutralisation and contrastivity: a Welsh case study

    Paper presented at the 2023 Western Conference on Linguistics: Initial syllable faithfulness is a well-established and strong bias against alternations affecting the left edge of the word (e.g. Trubetzkoy 1939, Steriade 1994, Beckman 1998, Casali 1998, Alber 2001, Smith 2002, Barnes 2002, Becker et al. 2012). This is reflected in the disproportionally important role word onsets play in word recognition (Beckman 1998, Smith 2002). As Smith (2002) argues, such initial alternations must, if anything, improve recognisability, e.g. by increasing prominence for the parser.

    11 Nov 2023

    Links:

    Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
  • Pushing boundaries in the measurement of language attitudes: Combining new technology and standardising practice

    Paper presented at Linguistics Beyond and Within 2023:

    Speakers’ attitudes are considered a fundamental barometer for the current and future vitality of a language, with recent work emphasising the importance of methodological developments (Kircher & Zipp, 2022). This, together with the growing concern surrounding the replicability of results across the social sciences, including in linguistics (Grieve, 2021), calls for urgent developments in research practices, including the adoption of more consistent and comparable implementations of method. In this paper, we present a series of studies conducted using a newly developed digital application for the collection, storage and transfer of data for research in multilingualism and language attitudes, specifically designed for research in bilingual populations who speak a majority language and a regional/minority/heritage language. This application offers the fundamental benefit of enhancing consistency and comparability within and across studies, which also improves reproducibility, for example by ensuring that presentation of stimuli for a speaker evaluation paradigm (Lambert et al., 1960) is more strictly controlled both across participants and across studies. As the source code is publicly available and version-controlled, other researchers can easily view and reconstruct tasks exactly as they were administered. The application was recently employed across three European communities whose regional/minority languages receive radically different degrees of socio-political recognition: Lombard (Italy), Moselle Franconian (Belgium), and Welsh (UK).Our results reveal fundamental differences in attitude scores depending on measurement type (questionnaire vs. speaker evaluation paradigm). Besides reinforcing the view that different measurements are likely to tap on different attitudinal constructs (e.g., Pantos, 2019), these results also suggest that different measurement methods may gather data on different attitude objects. We argue that this highlights a need for a more holistic approach to the measurement of language attitudes, where a battery of tests – as opposed to a single measure – should become the norm, as it has done in other research areas.

    13 Oct 2023

    Links:

    Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
  • A matter of strength: Language policy, attitudes, and linguistic dominance in three bilingual communities

    Paper presented at the 4th International Conference on Multilingualism and Multilingual Education

    12 Oct 2023

    Links:

    Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
  • New developments in documenting attitudes in minority and heritage language situations: an Italian case-study

    Paper presented at Documenting languages, Documenting Cultures 2023. The conference focuses on the topic of language documentation from the various perspectives offered by different ‘minority’ situations (migrant languages, minority languages, dialects). Its aim is to provide an interdisciplinary look at a topic which is today the focus of renewed interest, both in epistemological and theoretical terms.

    6 Oct 2023

    Links:

    Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
  • What do you really think about Welsh?

    Public outreach presentation at the Llŷn and Eifionydd National Eisteddfod 2023

    12 Aug 2023

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Festival/Exhibition (Speaker)
  • Eastern Generative Grammar Summer School

    Taught an advanced course on the Morphosyntax-Phonology Interface and an Introduction to Melodic Representation.

    24 Jul 2023 – 5 Aug 2023

    Activity: Participation in Academic workshop, seminar, course (Invited speaker)
  • New avenues in collecting attitudinal data on regional/minority languages: the case of Welsh

    Paper presented at the Welsh Linguistics Seminar

    27 Jun 2023

    Activity: Invited talk (Speaker)
  • Quantity in North Welsh disyllables: Between Phonology and Phonetics

    Paper presented at Approaches to Phonology and Phonetics

    24 Jun 2023

    Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)

2021

2019

2018