Jack Mahlmann

My name is Jack Mahlmann, and I'm currently a PhD student in the University of Toronto's Department of Linguistics. I acquired my Master of Arts in Linguistics from the University of Toronto, where I also received my Honors Bachelor of Arts with a double major in Linguistics and Political Science. 

I'm interested in many areas of linguistics like sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and phonology, but my current research is with Mayan languages in the field of revitalization and documentation. Specifically, my goal is to utilize phonetic methods to investigate a language's acoustic characteristics and their impact on revitalization efforts. 

In support of this goal, my MA thesis was a study comparing VOT of ejectives produced by L1 and L2 speakers of Itza' (published here in CAA proceedings). I've also been working on the perception of plain-ejective contrast by naive English listeners to better understand how L2 learners acquire ejectives as a new sound category (abstract here), and am currently designing and planning a descriptive project on ejective production in several Mayan languages.