Eric Wilbanks

I'm a linguist in industry with expertise in using NLP, data science, and Generative AI to generate insights and solve business problems.

In academia, I researched speech perception and production to better understand the mechanisms humans use to produce and understand spoken language.

I'm a proud former member of the UC Berkeley Phon Lab, Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley (SLaB), and the NCSU Phonetics Lab.

Research

(Socio)phonetics

How do social factors condition phonetic variation in speech? What types of social cues can be leveraged during speech perception? How do listeners integrate social information and linguistic information?

Variation and Change

What principles govern the actuation of a sound change? How do such changes progress and how are they transferred? Which types of individuals are more likely to be leaders of sound change?

Modeling/Computational Tools

How can we best incorporate variation in our formal phonological models? Which computational methodologies are best suited to the analysis of phonetic data?

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(Socio)phonetics

Social Identity and Speech Perception
Wilbanks, Eric. 2019. Modeling the influence of confidence in social cues during speech perception using Gaussian mixture models. International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Melbourne, Australia.
Wilbanks, Eric. 2015. The Role of Social Information in Cognitive Processing: Sex and Sexuality. Acoustical Society of America 169th Meeting. Pittsburgh, PA. (poster).
Wilbanks, Eric. 2013. Pitch and VOT as Factors in the Perception of Sexual Identity and Masculinity in Male Speech. New Ways of Analyzing Variation 42. Pittsburgh, PA.
Speech Production Dynamics
Wilbanks, Eric. 2016. Spectral Trajectories of Spanish /s/: Temporal Variability, Vowel Context, and Duration.LabPhon 15. Ithaca, NY. (poster).
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Variation and Change

Variationist Sociolinguistics
Wilbanks, Eric. Variationist Research in the South: Current Perspectives and Future Directions. Language Variety in the New South: Contemporary perspectives on change and variation, ed. by Jeffrey Reaser, Eric Wilbanks, Karissa Wojcik, and Walt Wolfram, 397-415. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
Reaser, Jeffrey; Eric Wilbanks; Karissa Wojcik; and Walt Wolfram (eds.). Language Variety in the New South: Contemporary perspectives on change and variation. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
Wilbanks, Eric, and Brooke Wallig. 2016. The Past, Present, and Future of Variationist Sociolinguistics. Review of Making Waves: The Story of Variationist Sociolinguistics by Sali Tagliamonte. American Speech 91.4, 517-531.
Sound Change and Phonetic Variation
Smith, Bridget J.; Jeff Mielke; Lyra Magloughlin; and Eric Wilbanks. 2019. Sound change and coarticulatory variability involving English /ɹ/. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 4.1.61 (1-51).
Wilbanks, Eric. 2017. Social and Structural Constraints on a Phonetically-Motivated Change in Progress: (str) Retraction in Raleigh, NC. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 23.1.33.
Magloughlin, Lyra, and Eric Wilbanks. 2016. An Apparent Time Study of (str) Retraction and /tr/ - /dr/ Affrication in Raleigh, NC English. Presented at NWAV 45. Vancouver, BC, Canada.
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Modeling/Computational Tools

Formal Phonological Modeling
Inkelas, Sharon, and Eric Wilbanks. Directionality effects via distance-based penalty scaling. Proceedings of the 2017 Annual Meeting on Phonology, ed. by Gillian Gallagher, Maria Gouskova, and Sora Yin. Washington, DC: Linguistics Society of America.
Inkelas, Sharon, and Eric Wilbanks. 2017. Directionality effects via Distance-Based Penalty Scaling. Annual Meeting on Phonology. New York, New York.
faseAlign - Spanish Forced Alignment
faseAlign Documentation and User Guide
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Workshops

Workshops

Slides and supplemental materials for workshops I've led

Topic Date Files Co-presenter(s) Location
Clustering Methods for Linguistic Data Mar. 31, 2022 Materials University of California, Berkeley
Analyzing Twitter Data in Python Oct. 28, 2020 Materials University of California, Berkeley
Praat Scripting Sep. 18, 2015 Slides Amy Hemmeter North Carolina State University
Twitter Data Analysis in R Aug. 28, 2015 Slides - North Carolina State University
LaTeX Typesetting Nov. 21, 2014 Slides Jeff Mielke North Carolina State University
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