Christina Esposito

Christina Esposito serves as Professor and Chair of the Linguistics Department at Macalester College, specializing in the production and perception of voice quality in languages including White Hmong, Zapotec, and Gujarati.

Her academic credentials:

• Ph.D. in Linguistics (2006), University of California, Los Angeles
• M.A. in Linguistics (2003), University of California, Los Angeles
• B.A. in Linguistics (with honors) and Anthropology (2000), State University of New York at Albany (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa)

Professor Esposito's research centers on phonation, exploring how languages use voice quality (e.g., creaky, breathy) for phonological contrasts, the interaction with prosody, and cross-linguistic perception. Her fieldwork focuses on South and Southeast Asian languages, employing acoustic and electroglottographic methods to analyze speech production and perception.

Her publication record demonstrates a strong focus on cross-linguistic phonation studies, particularly in tone languages like White Hmong and indigenous languages such as Zapotec. She frequently investigates the acoustic correlates of voice quality and its role in linguistic contrasts across diverse language families.

She has mentored undergraduate researchers including Kaitlyn Arctander, H. Kinney, J. Ptacek, and S. Yang on projects ranging from vowel mergers in American English to phonation in White Hmong. Funded by an NSF grant and Macalester College grants, her work supports collaborative student research and international travel for linguistic fieldwork.