Paige-Erin Wheeler

About Me

I am a PhD candidate in Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. My research focuses on documentation and description of Enlhet-Enenlhet languages (spoken in Paraguay). I completed my Master’s thesis, which was based on my pilot fieldwork, on consonants and syllable structure in Angaité [aqt]. Data from this field trip are archived here. My current project focuses on the phonetics of vowels in Toba-Enenlhet [tmf].

Current projects

My current project focuses on vowels in Enenlhet, examining a corpus of around 16,000 vowels in the language. The project aims to describe factors which affect duration (a vowel’s position within a word, a word’s position within a phrase, syllable structure, voicing of the following consonant, and annotated vowel length), vowel quality, and voice quality. The goal is to robustly describe the unique three-vowel system of Enenlhet, in preparation for future historical and comparative studies of vowels in Enenlhet and related languages. Enlhet-Enenlhet languages use a system with just three vowels, /a, e, o/, which is typologically unusual because it does not contain any high vowels. This language and its sisters have much to contribute to language typology, historical linguistics, and phonetic theory.

I have also collaborated on several projects which investigated the use of chatbot AI in higher education admissions. These studies examined the bilingual (Spanish-English) function of chatbots on university websites to provide application and financial aid information for prospective students.

Previous research

I previously worked on Angaité, another Enlhet-Enenlhet language. My MA thesis presents a descriptive study of consonants and syllables in the language, outlining a consonant inventory of 14 consonants which can form (C)V(C) syllables. While completing my BA, I worked with Dr. Cynthia Hansen to investigate unanticipated patterns of irrealis marking in procedural-type discourses in a corpus of Iquito (Zaparo [iqu]) texts, which can be found here. I also worked on a project with Dr. Erin Cowling that focused on quantitative methods for analysis of 17th century Spanish literature.