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Myriam Lapierre's research interests lie at the intersection of formal phonology, experimental phonetics, language documentation, and typology. Her work focuses on the sound systems of Amazonian languages in Brazil, especially the Jê and Tupí-Guaraní language families. She has conducted extensive in-situ fieldwork on four languages in the Jê family, namely Panãra, Mẽbêngôkre, Kajkwakhrattxi, and Xavante, as well as on Kawaiwete, a language from the Tupí-Guaraní family. Her research aims to understand the range of possible and impossible phonological processes and phenomena constrained by physiological and cognitive perspectives. Lapierre's contributions to representational phonology provide evidence that phonological grammars utilize subsegmental units, which are representational units smaller than the phoneme. She is particularly interested in the phonetics and phonology of nasality as well as how understudied languages can contribute to understanding the diverse ways nasality is used meaningfully in language.
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