About Me

It was probably my passion for music and singing that first arouse my interest in speech and language. Observing and accompanying four bilingual children during my time as Au-Pair further let me get a glimpse of the beauty of language acquisition and stimulated my fascination for it.

After I enriched the theoretical knowledge I gained during my bachelor studies with practical experience from internships and my master studies, I started my PhD at LOLA to learn more about the development of speech production during childhood.

In my project, I record tongue movements of three- to nine-year-old children as well as adults to investigate how coarticulation changes across age and what might be the driving forces for those developments. Currently, I’m working on a possible link between literacy acquisition and coarticulation degree.

Research Projects

Phonological competition in English children
The effect of structural, frequency, and probabilistic characteristics on preschoolers’ speech planning
Development of coarticulation in German children 3 to 8 years of age

Education

2015: M.Sc. Experimental and Clinical Linguistics (Uni Potsdam)
  Master Thesis: Speech planning in preschoolers’ picture naming

2013: B.Sc. General Linguistics (Uni Potsdam)
  Bachelor Thesis: The effect of syllable structure and phonological competition in English-speaking children

Research Experience

Internship in the SPAN group: Prof. Louis Goldstein & Pr. Shri Narayanan (Language Acquisition & Real-Time MRI)
Student research assistant: PD. Dr. Frank Kügler (Phonology)
Student research assistant: Dr. Aude Noiray (Language Acquisition)
Internship in the SpeechLab: Prof. Dr. Adamantios Gafos (Articulatory Phonology)

Technical experience

Ultrasound imaging
Acoustic analyses in PRAAT
Acoustic analyses, experiment running and basic programming in MATLAB
Statistical analyses in R
Administering and scoring various developmental assessments

Recent teaching

Winter semesters 2015/2016;  2016/2017; 2017/2018; 2018/2019; 2019/2020: B.Sc. Linguistics & B.Sc. Computerlinguistics 
  Lecture: Introduction to Language Acquisition
Summer semester 2016, 2017: B.Sc. Linguistics & B.Sc. Computeringuistics
  Seminar in Language Acquisition: Production

STIPENDS & AWARDS

04-12.2020: Completion scholarship of the Potsdam Graduate School
2017: Student Award, International Phonetic Association (IPA) for presenting at PaPE 2017, Cologne
2016: Award for the year’s best graduates of the Faculty of Human Sciences at University of Potsdam
2015: Student Support Award for presenting at Ultrafest VII, Hong Kong

Publications

  Peer-reviewed journals

Noiray, A. Ries, J., Tiede, M., Rubertus, E., Laporte, C, & Ménard, L. (2020). Recording and analyzing kinematic data in children and adults with SOLLAR: Sonographic & Optical Linguo-Labial Articulation Recording system (SOLLAR). Laboratory Phonology, 11(1), 14. DOI

Rubertus, E., & Noiray, A. (2020). Vocalic activation width decreases across childhood: evidence from carryover coarticulation. Laboratory Phonology, 11(7).

Noiray, A., Popescu, A.,  Killmer, H., Rubertus, E., Krüger, S., & Hintermeier, L. (2019). Spoken language development and the challenge of skill integration. Frontiers in Psychology, section Language Sciences. DOI 

Noiray, A., Wieling, M., Abakarova, D., Rubertus, E. & Tiede, M. (2019). Back from the future: nonlinear anticipation in adults and children´s speech. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 62(8S), 3033–3054.

Rubertus, E. & Noiray, A. (2018). On the development of gestural organization: A cross-sectional study of vowel-to-vowel anticipatory coarticulation. PLOS One. DOI 

Noiray, A., Abakarova, D., Rubertus, E., Krüger, S., & Tiede, M (2018). How children organise their speech in the first years of life? Insight from ultrasound imaging. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, (61), 1355-1368. DOI 

  Conference proceedings

Rubertus, E., Popescu, A., & Noiray, A. (2020). Development of coarticulation: comparing modalities in beginning readers. International Seminar on Speech Production, Providence, December.

  Rubertus, E., Noiray, A. (2020). Anticipatory and carryover coarticulation share a similar origin: evidence from child speech. International Seminar on Speech Production, Providence, December

Rubertus, E., & Noiray, A. (2017). The role of the tongue control maturation for V-to-V coarticulation. Speech Motor Control, Groningen, July 7th, December.

Rubertus, E., Abakarova, D., Ries, J., & Noiray, A. (2017). Comparing coarticulatory directions in German children, Phonetics and Phonology in Europe, PaPE, Cologne.  

Noiray, A., Abakarova, D., Rubertus, E., & Ries, J. (2017). On the domain of intra-syllabic coarticulation in German children. Abstraction, Diversity, and Speech Dynamics, Munich, May 3rd. 

Rubertus, E., Ries, J., & Noiray, A. (2017). V-to-V coarticulation direction in children and adults: An ultrasound study. Abstraction, Diversity, and Speech DynamicsMunich, May 3rd.

Rubertus, E., Abakarova, D., Ries, J., & Noiray, A. (2016). Anticipatory V-to-V Coarticulation in German Preschoolers. Proceedings of Tagung Phonetik und Phonologie im deutschsprachigen Raum,  Munich, Oct 12.

Noiray, A., Abakarova, D., Rubertus, E., Mooshammer, C. (2016). Lexical and phonological effects on word planning in English children. Labphon 15, Ithaca, July 13th.

Noiray, A., Rubertus, E., Mooshammer, C. (2016). Phonological competition in young learners of English. Labphon 15, Ithaca, July 13th.

Rubertus, E., Abakarova, D., Ries, J., Tiede, M., Noiray, A. (2015). Development of coarticulation in German children: Acoustic and articulatory locus equations. Ultrafest VII, Hong Kong, Dec 8-10.

Rubertus, E., Noiray, A., & Mooshammer, C. (2015). The effect of structural, frequency and probabilistic characteristics in preschoolers’ speech planning. Proceedings Workshop on Infant Language Development, Stockholm, Sweden, p. 155.

  Invited talks, oral presentations at conferences

July 2017: The role of the tongue control maturation for V-to-V coarticulation. Oral presentation at Speech Motor Control, Groningen.

March 2017: The development of V-to-V coarticulation in German: An ultrasound study. Invited talk by Prof. Dr. Goldstein and Prof. Dr. Narayanan (USC, Los Angeles).

January 2017: Anticipatory V-to-V coarticulation in German children and adults: An ultrasound study. Oral presentation at 5th International Winter School on Speech Perception and Production, Chorin.

October 2016: Anticipatory V-to-V coarticulation in German preschoolers. Oral presentation at Tagung Phonetik und Phonologie im deutschsprachigen Raum.