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Patrick Gehringer

Education:
BA, Oakland University, 2021
MA, University of Kentucky, in progress
Biography:

Born in Kalamazoo Michigan, I was cursed with a fascination for language at 5, when I realized that spelling was arbitrary, followed by the realization that all language was arbitrary a few catatonic hours later. I have sense lived in the Metro-Detroit area and Lexington Kentucky, following my love of language. I have a passion for learning language, teaching, conlanging and worldbuilding, and my research, which focuses on the sounds and perceptions of American English in the North, and the sound, perceptions, and history of Albanian. 

So far, I have worked two years as an Undergraduate TA, taught English as a Second Language in Pontiac, worked as a research assistant, taught 7th & 8th grade Science for three months and 6th & 7th grade Spanish for a month as a long term substitute, and continue to serve as a linguistics TA for the University of Kentucky.

My current work asks questions like 

       - Do people think the North exists the same way that the American South does?

       - Where is the North?

       - What do southerners think about northern accents?

       - How is languge in the North changing?

       - What are the clusters like mbret, ndikoj, and nge in Albanian?

       - Where did those clusters come from, how are they used?

Research Interests:
Phonetics & Phonology
Sociolinguistics
Sociophonetics
Perceptual dialectology
Historical Linguistics