Samuel Akinbo: President's Postdoctoral Fellow

Samuel Akinbo (he/him/his) is a 2021–22 President's Postdoctoral Fellow.

Department
Institute of Linguistics

President's Postdoctoral Fellow Program Mentor
Claire Halpert

Undergraduate Institution
University of Ibadan

Doctoral Institution
University of British Columbia

Dissertation Title
Vowel Harmony and Some Relatedness Processes in Fungwa

Research Interests
I am a community-engaged researcher with interests in phonological theory and phonetics. I have deep experience doing community-engaged research on endangered and under-resourced languages of Sub-Saharan Africa. My approach to field linguistics involves considering language-external evidence for linguistic theory, so my research also focuses on the connection between language and music. Coupled with phonological description and analysis of understudied languages, my research uses newer instrumental methods (e.g ultrasound tongue imaging), statistical models and data visualisation techniques to investigate details about phonetic properties of sounds that were not possible to capture through older impressionistic observation methods. Considering that sound-meaning mapping is an obligatory aspect of spoken language but an optional aspect of music, my research on language and language-based music are unified through my interest in non-arbitrary sound-meaning mapping.