Amy J. Schafer

Associate Professor of Linguistics

Associated Faculty, Cognitive Science at the University of Hawai`i

Amy Schafer (on right) demonstrating laboratory equipment

 Department of Linguistics, Moore Hall
University of Hawai`i at Manoa 
1890 East-West Road 
Honolulu, HI 96822 

Office: Moore 562 
Office phone and voicemail: (808) 956-3226 
Email: aschafer@hawaii.edu

Department phone: (808) 956-8602 
Department fax: (808) 956-9166 

General lab telephone: (808) 956-5854 
Phonetics lab telephone: (808) 956-4618 
Tracker lab telephone: (808) 956-6059 

What time is it in Honolulu?

Research and teaching laboratories:

Language Analysis and Experimentation Labs (LAE Labs)

Research interests: 

  • The integration of multiple sources of information in sentence processing. 
  •  The relationship between sentence production patterns and sentence comprehension patterns. 
  •  Effects of given, new, and focussed information in sentence processing.
  •  Prosodic structure in sentence comprehension and production. 
  • Phonological representations of prosody and their phonetic realizations, across languages and dialects (especially English, Korean, and Austronesian languages); grammatical constraints on prosodic form.

    • Education and postdoctoral training: 

  • B.A. in Linguistics and Anthropology, Washington University, 1989.
  • Ph.D. in Linguistics, University of Massachusetts, 1997.
  • Postdoctoral Training in Spoken Sentence Processing, Depts. of Psychology and Speech-Language-Hearing, University of Kansas, 1996 - 1998.
  • Postdoctoral Training in Phonetics, Department of Linguistics, UCLA, 1998 - 2001.

    • Teaching at UH: 

  • LING 320 - General Linguistics
  • LING 412 - Psycholinguistics (primarily for undergraduate students) 
  • LING 632 - Laboratory Research
  • LING 640G - Professional Issues in Linguistics
  • LING 640Y - Psycholinguistics (for graduate students)
  • Ling 730 - Advanced Laboratory Research (by consent only)
  • LING 750Y - Seminar in Psycholinguistics (topic varies)

    • Students:

    • Michiko Nakamura, Ph.D. in Linguistics, Univeristy of Hawai`i, 2003, Processing of multiple filler-gap dependencies in Japanese.  (Co-chair with William O'Grady.)
    • Hyekyung Hwang, Ph.D. in progress.
    • Kyuseek Hwang, Ph.D. in progress.
    • Jaehoon Jeong, M.A. in progress.
    • Manami Sato, Ph.D. in progress.
    • Annie Tremblay, Ph.D. in progress (in Second Language Studies; co-chair with Bonnie Schwartz)
    • Heeyeoun Yoon, Ph.D. in progress.

    Selected publications and presentations:

    • Schafer, A.J., Speer, S.R., &  Warren, P. (2005). Prosodic influences on the production and comprehension of syntactic ambiguity in a game-based conversation task. In M. Tanenhaus & J. Trueswell (Eds.) Approaches to Studying World Situated Language Use: Psycholinguistic, Linguistic and Computational Perspectives on Bridging the Product and Action Tradition, Cambridge: MIT Press.  [PDF]  [Soundfiles]

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    •  Warren, P., Speer, S.R., & Schafer, A.J. (2003). Wanna-contraction and prosodic disambiguation in US and NZ English. Wellington Working Papers in Linguistics, 15, 31-49.  [PDF] 

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    • Speer, S.R., Warren, P., & Schafer, A.J.  (2003). Intonation and sentence processing. Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Barcelona, 3-9 August 2003. [PDF] 

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    • Schafer, A.J. & Jun, S.-A. (2002). Effects of accentual phrasing on adjective interpretation in Korean. In M. Nakayama (Ed.) Sentence Processing in East Asian Languages, Stanford: CSLI Publications.  [Please contact me for a copy]  [Soundfiles]

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    • Schafer, A.J. & Jun, S.-A. (2001). Effects of focus on prosodic reflections of phrase structure in American English. The Prosody in Processing Workshop, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands.  [Please contact me for a copy or for soundfiles]  [Abstract]

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    • Schafer, A.J., Carlson, K., Clifton, C., & Frazier, L. (2000). Focus and the interpretation of pitch accent: Disambiguating embedded questions. Language and Speech, 43, 75-105.  [PDF]  [Soundfiles]

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    • Schafer, A.J., Speer, S.R., Warren, P., & White, S.D. (2000). Intonational disambiguation in sentence production and comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29, 169-182.  [PDF]  [Soundfiles]

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    •  Warren, P., Schafer, A.J., Speer, S.R., & White, S.D. (2000). Prosodic resolution of prepositional phrase ambiguity in ambiguous and unambiguous situations. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, 99, 5-33.  [PDF]  [Soundfiles]

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    • Schafer, A.J. (1998). Bounded projection: The effect of prosodic phrasing on focus interpretation.  In E. Benedicto, M. Romero & S. Tomioka (Eds.) University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics 21: Proceedings of the Workshop on Focus. Amherst: GLSA.  [Please contact me for a copy]  [Soundfiles]

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    • Schafer, A.J. & Speer, S.R. (1998). Prosodic influences on the resolution of lexical ambiguity. Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, New York, NY.  [PDF]  [Soundfiles]

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    • Schafer, A.J. (1997). Prosodic Parsing: The Role of Prosody in Sentence Comprehension. University of Massachusetts Doctoral Dissertation.  [Please contact me for a copy]   [Soundfiles]

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    • Schafer, A.J., Carter, J., Clifton, C. & Frazier, L.  (1996). Focus in relative clause construal. Language and Cognitive Processes, 11, 135 - 163.  [Please contact me for a copy]  [Soundfiles] 
    Last modified August 2006