Matthew Faytak

Matthew Faytak is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University at Buffalo. Previously, he served as a postdoctoral research fellow and lecturer at UCLA following his PhD in Linguistics from UC Berkeley (2018). His research focuses on articulatory phonetics, particularly using tongue ultrasound imaging to study the production of fricative vowels in Chinese dialects and languages of Cameroon. Key affiliations include the University at Buffalo, UCLA, and fieldwork partnerships in Cameroon and China.

Education: PhD in Linguistics (UC Berkeley, 2018); Dissertation: 'Within-speaker uniformity of articulatory strategies for fricative consonants and Suzhou Chinese vowels.'
Research Interests: Articulatory phonetics, covert variation, phonological feature theory, field methods, and the phonetics of underdocumented languages. Specializes in Chinese dialects and Cameroon Grassfields languages.

Recent Activities: Invited speaker at LSA 2022 on portable phonetics labs; published in Linguistics Vanguard, Journal of the IPA, and Laboratory Phonology. Co-developed the Speech Articulation Toolkit (SATKit) for ultrasound analysis.

Awards: JIPA 'Most Illustrative Illustration' shortlist (2021) for work on Kejom language documentation.

Collaborations: Group project on North American English flaps at UCLA; interdisciplinary work with speech scientists and field linguists.