Assistant Professor
Department of Linguistics, University of British Columbia.

Ph.D., Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley.
Dissertation: Phonetic and Social Selectivity in Phonetic Accommodation
Committee: Keith Johnson (chair), Andrew Garrett, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton.

M.A., Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley.

B.A. with highest distinction summa cum laude, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Linguistics, Anthropology, and Spanish. Honors Thesis: Language Attrition, Obsolescence, and Death: social historical, and linguistic motivations.

Babel, Molly, Garrett, Andrew, Houser, Michael, & Toosarvandani, Maziar. Descent and diffusion in language diversification: A study of Western Numic dialectology. International Journal of American Linguistics. [pdf]

Babel, Molly, Houser, Michael, & Toosarvandani, Maziar. A Phonetic Description of Mono Lake Northern Paiute. Journal of the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Babel, Molly & Benjamin Munson. Producing Socially Meaningful Linguistic Variation. In Victor Ferreira, Matt Goldrick, & Michele Miozzo (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Language Production. [pdf]

Babel, Molly. Evidence for phonetic and social selectivity in spontaneous phonetic imitation. Journal of Phonetics, 40, pp. 177-189.[pdf of an early version]

Babel, Molly. Imitation in Speech. Acoustics Today, 7, 4, 16-23.

Babel, Molly & Bulatov, Dasha. The role of fundamental frequency in phonetic accommodation. Language and Speech. [pdf of an earlier version]

Babel, Molly. Dialect convergence and divergence in New Zealand English. Language in Society 39 (4), 437-456. [pdf]

Babel, Molly & Johnson, Keith. Accessing psycho-acoustic perception with speech sounds. Laboratory Phonology, 1(1), 179-205. [pdf]

Johnson, Keith & Babel, Molly. On the perceptual basis of distinctive features: Evidence from the perception of fricatives by Dutch and English speakers. Journal of Phonetics, 38 (1), 127-136. [an early draft]

Babel, Molly & Munson, Benjamin. Teaching and Learning Guide for Loose lips and silver tongues, or projecting sexual orientation through speech, Language and Linguistic Compass, 4 (2), 135-137.

Babel, Molly. The phonetics and phonology of obsolescence in Northern Paiute. In Variation in Indigenous Minority Languages, Dennis Preston and James Stanford (eds.), Amsterdam: Benjamins. pp. 23-45.

Munson, Benjamin & Babel, Molly. Loose lips and silver tongues, or projecting sexual orientation through speech. Language and Linguistic Compass. [pdf]

Munson, Benjamin & Babel, Molly. The sequential cueing effect in children's speech production.  Applied Psycholinguistics, 26 (2), 157-174. [pdf].

Babel, Molly. Vowel Imitation in Spontaneous Phonetic Imitation, Canadian Acoustics Proceedings., 37 (3), pp. 140-141.

Babel, Molly. The phonetic and phonological effects of moribundity. U. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 14.2: Papers from NWAV 36, ed. Kyle Gorman, pp. 25-34. here.

Babel, Molly & Johnson, Keith. Cross-linguistic differences in the perception of palatalization.  Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of the Phonetic Sciences. [pdf]

Babel, Molly. Social judgments and their acoustic cues in read speech. UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report, pp. 226-24. here.

Babel, Molly. Multiple stresses in Aegean Turkish. Proceedings of the 13th Annual International Conference on Turkish Linguistics. [pdf]

Babel, Molly, Grant McGuire, & Joseph King. Acoustic determiners of vocal attractiveness go beyond apparent talker size.[pdf]

McGuire, Grant & Molly Babel. A cross-model account for synchronic and diachronic patterns of /f/ and /θ/.[pdf]

Babel, Molly & Grant McGuire. Listener expectations and gender bias in nonsibilant fricative perception. [pdf]

Phonetic convergence: A socially motivated process or a cognitive reflex? Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, San Francisco.

The influence of talker race on phonetic accommodation. Paper presented at the 37th Annual Meeting of New Ways of Analyzing Variation, Houston, TX.

Accessing psycho-acoustic perception with speech sounds. With Keith Johnson. Paper presented at Laboratory Phonology 11, Wellington, New Zealand.

The phonetic and phonological effects of moribundity. Paper presented at the 36th Annual Meeting of New Ways of Analyzing Variation, Philadelphia, PA. [slides]

Descent vs. diffusion in language diversification: Mono Lake Paiute and Western Numic dialectology. (with Michael J. Houser, Maziar Toosarvandani, and Andrew Garrett). Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Anaheim, CA. [handout]

Exploring the etiology of phonological impairment (with Benjamin Munson, Adriane Baylis, Kenda Blasing, Sarah Brincks, Miriam Krause, Dawn Simmons, Aubrey White, and Don-Sun Yim).  Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Miami, FL.

Global talker characteristics and judgments of gay-sounding speech (with Keith Johnson).  Paper presented at the 35th Annual Meeting of New Ways of Analyzing Variation, Columbus, OH. [handout]

A web-accessible Mono Lake Paiute dictionary and text archive (with Andrew Garrett, Erin Haynes, Michael Houser, Reiko Kataoka, Fanny Liu, Nicole Marcus, Ruth Rouvier, Ronald Sprouse, Angela Strom-Weber, and Maziar Toosarvandani). Paper presented at the Friends of Uto-Aztecan Languages Conference, Salt Lake City, UT.

The effects of language attrition on phonemic contrasts.  Paper presented at the Friends of Uto-Aztecan Languages Conference, Salt Lake City, UT. [slides]

Multiple stresses in Aegean Turkish. Paper presented at the 13th Annual Meeting of the International Conference on Turkish Linguistics. Uppsala, Sweden. [slides]

Acoustic Talker Similarity and Perceived Gayness (with Keith Johnson). Invited talk at workshop on Phonetics, Gender, and Sexual Orientation. Toronto, Canada.

Lexical and Phonological Processing in Children with Phonological Impairments (with Benjamin Munson, Adriane Baylis, and Dong-sun Yim).  Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Philadelphia, PA.

The effect of talker image on phonetic convergence. Poster presented at the Fall meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Miami, FL.

A phonetic description of Mono Lake Northern Paiute (with Michael J. Houser and Maziar Toosarvandani). Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Chicago, IL. [poster]

Judgments of gay-sounding speech across and within dialects. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Society of America, Chicago, IL. [poster]

Cross-linguistic differences in the perception of palatalization. (with Keith Johnson). Poster presented at the 16th International Congress of the Phonetic Sciences, Saarbrucken, Germany. [poster]

Phonetic manifestation of fake geminates in Turkish (with Anne Pycha). Poster presented at the spring meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Salt Lake City, UT. [poster]

Differences in speech and non-speech perception (with Keith Johnson).  Poster presented at the spring meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Salt Lake City, UT. [poster]

The lenis/fortis contrast in Mono Lake Northern Paiute. Poster presented at the fall meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Honolulu, HI. [poster]

Cross-linguistic fricative perception (with Keith Johnson).  Poster presented at the fall meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Honolulu, HI. [poster]

The influence of phonological priming on variability in articulation (with Benjamin Munson).  Poster presented at the spring meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. New York, NY. [poster]