Many apologies for the delay:
We are finally so happy to officially introduce the new Linguistics graduate students: Jessie Johnson, who came to USC in 2018 Spring, and the new Linguistics cohort of Fall 2018! Welcome!
Jessie Johnson
Hey everyone!
I’m Jessie and I’m originally from the Northeast, but I have moved over 50 times in my life! I am technically a first-year, but I transferred to USC from UC Merced’s Cognitive and Information Science program last semester.
After getting my BA at Central Connecticut State University in 2013, I worked for a few years before coming to graduate school. As a part of my BA, I completed linguistics coursework at Kyung Hee University in Seoul from 2011-2012. I taught Chinese and Vietnamese pilots in Phoenix, Arizona. I was motivated to research tone while finding ways to capitalize on my students’ tone/pitch intuitions in teaching English intonational cues. I completed my MA in General and Applied Linguistics at the Australian National University in 2017. My thesis was on the tonology of a previously undocumented variety of Tamang, for which I completed fieldwork in Nepal.
My research interests include syllable structure, and the prosodic consequences of the disruption of a syllable’s organization, stemming from my work on such topics.
Aside from linguistics, I enjoy history from all places and cultures, though I particularly enjoy British history (and its overlap with North American and Australasian settlement) from 1615-mid-20th century, as well as the Joseon Dynasty of Korea. It should come as no surprise then, that time travel is my favorite TV show trope.
Ian Rigby
Hi, my name is Ian Rigby, and I was born and raised in San Diego. In 2017, I earned my B.A. in Psychology from UCLA where I spent most of my undergraduate career working in language processing, language development, and neurobiology research labs. I am a psycholinguist working on sentence processing with interests in pragmatics and cognitive semantics. Before starting at USC, I worked as the lab manager for the Language Development and Processing Lab at the University of Washington. I loved Seattle and would happily gab about it anytime.
Outside of academia, I spend a good deal of time hiking, kayaking, and trying every donut shop that I can find (Seattle is best for the first two, but LA trumps on the third). I am looking forward to starting my studies at USC, and to finally be on the winning side during a USC vs. UCLA rivalry game.
Chloé Gfeller
Hi, I’m Chloé Gfeller, from France! I studied at Université Paris-Diderot. I majored in linguistics and English studies for undergrad, and I specialized in phonetics and phonology during my MA. My thesis was a phonetic study of positional allophony in ejective stops, and of how the position of an ejective in a word may affect the tension of the vocal folds during its production. When I’m not paying attention to how people pronounce things, I enjoy dancing (especially contemporary dance), and traveling.
Luis Miguel Toquero
My name is Luis Miguel Toquero, but everyone calls me Luismi. I am Spanish and I was a born in a small town in Castilla called La Pedraja. I did my undergraduate in English at the Universidad de Valladolid (Valladolid, Spain). Then in 2016 I moved to West Virginia to do a Master’s Degree in Linguistics and Spanish at West Virginia University (Morgantown, WV) where I was also a TA for basic and intermediate Spanish. My MA thesis is about the semantics of NN compounds in Spanish but I don’t know if that is something that can be pursued forward. That said, my research interests are undetermined yet. But I guess I am more of a (potential) syntactical or semanticist than phonologist or phonetician. I would definitely like to learn more about quantifiers and their scope and the syntax-semantics interface.
Apart from linguistics, I really like playing and watching soccer (I am a big FC Barcelona fan!). Also, I love watching movies and tv series and talking about them with some else afterwards. My favorite show is Twin Peaks (and yes including the third season!). Other than that, I am always looking for a space in my schedule to travel and spend time with my girlfriend. I am very happy to be here and be part of the USC linguistics community!
Sung Hah Hwang
Hi, my name is Sung Hah Hwang (황성하). I graduated with B.A. in English and minor in psychology from the University of Nevada Reno. After that, I went back to my home country, South Korea, and worked for about a year as an English teacher until I decided to pursue further education. Then I graduated with a M.A. in English Linguistics in Korea University where I went through a major paradigm shift in life after I met my former advisor, Hosung Nam, and some exceptional colleagues. My primary interests lie in the fields of speech sciences including phonetics, speech production, and Articulatory Phonology and of machine learning, especially in automatic speech recognition and natural language processing. A growing hobby of mine is web development using a popular Javascript framework, Angular 6. I always find joy in learning new technologies and also in buying them on impulse. I am happy to be joining you at USC!
Peifen Chen
Hi! My name is Peifen Chen. I came from Nanyang, a small but historical city in the middle of China. I got my Bachelor’s degree in Tongji University in Shanghai, with major in Chinese Language and Literature. From that time, I have developed huge interests in languages. Then I did my Master’s degree in the Chinese University of Hong Kong in the program of Chinese Linguistics and Language Acquisition. I also worked for two years as a Mandarin Teacher in Hong Kong after graduate.
I am very excited to start my new research journey here at USC, my interest is in Syntax and Language Acquisition. However, I would also love to explore new areas in Psycholinguistics, and Phonetics. I feel people here at USC are all very welcoming and friendly, and I am hoping to meet you all in the following days.
