Educational Background

• B.A., the Pennsylvania State University, 1977
• M.A., University of California, San Diego, 1979
• Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, 1982
• Dissertation: [The Lexicon in a Model of Language Production]

Academic Positions

• 1982-1984 Sloan Postdoctoral Fellowship in Cognitive Science, Department of Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon University.
• 1984-1985 NIH Postdoctoral Trainee Fellowship, Department of Psychology, Indiana University
• 1985-1991 University of Minnesota, Department of Linguistics
• 1991-2001 University of Minnesota, Department of Communication Disorders
• 2001- University of British Columbia, Department of Linguistics

Areas of Interest

I am primarily interested in phonology, morphology, and their interaction. Most of my research is in adult psycholinguistics and in first language acquisition, and investigates the nature of cognitive representations. The adult work focuses primarily on errors during speaking, employing a variety of experimental tasks such as SLIPs (for phonological errors), and morphonaming and sentence production (for morphological errors), with some residual work involving my corpus of 7500 errors collected from spontaneous speech. Research on English child language (often in collaboration with May Bernhardt) involves collecting data from both normally-developing children and children with phonological delays/disorders, ChiLDES-based research, and analysis of diary-study data. I am also involved in a study of first language acquisition by monolingual Zapotec-learning children in San Lucas Quiavini, Oaxaca, Mexico, and am intending to begin a similar study on Slovene. My theoretical orientations are towards Optimality Theory, employing our own version of the theory, and towards connectionist models. Current research tends to focus on the degree to which phonological and morphological information is concentrated in particular lexical items vs. the degree to which lexical processing is supplemented with system-general information, but the acquisition projects look at all aspects of phonology and morphology.

Languages I have worked on include English (my native language), Slovene (my father’s first language), San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec (field work with young children), Choctaw, Cambodian, and Ojibwe (in field methods classes that I have taken or taught), and Seri and German (collaborating with people who actually work on the language).

Courses Recently Taught

Undergraduate

LING 451, COGS 200

Graduate

LING 518, LING 530

• Bernhardt, B.M., Stemberger, J.P., & Charest, M. (in press). Intervention for speech production in children and adolescents: Models of speech production and therapy approaches. Canadian Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, in press.
• Stemberger, J.P. (2009). Preventing Perseveration in Language Production. Language and Cognitive Processes, 24, 1431-1470.
• Ullrich, A., Stemberger, J.P., & Bernhardt, B.M. (2008). Variability in a German-speaking child as viewed with constraints-based nonlinear phonology. Asia-Pacific Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing, 11, 221-238.
• Stemberger, J.P. (2007). Children’s overtensing errors: Phonological and lexical effects on syntax. Journal of Memory & Language, 57, 49-64.
• Bernhardt, B., Stemberger, J.P., & Major, E. (2006). General and nonlinear phonological intervention perspectives for a child with a resistant phonological impairment. Advances in Speech-Language Pathology, 8, 190-206.
• Stemberger, J.P. (2004). Neighbourhood effects on error rates in speech production. Brain & Language, 90, 413-422.
• Stemberger, J.P. (2004). Phonological priming and irregular past. Journal of Memory & Language, 50, 82-95.
• Stemberger, J.P., & Middleton, C.M. (2003). Vowel dominance and morphological processing. Language & Cognitive Processes, 18, 369-404.
• Stemberger, J.P. (2002). Overtensing and the effect of regularity. Cognitive Science, 26, 737-766.
• Stemberger, J.P., & Bernhardt, B. (2002). Editorial: Forum on Intervocalic Consonants in Phonological Development. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 16, 149-154.
• Bernhardt, B., & Stemberger, J.P. (2002). Intervocalic consonants in the speech of children with phonological disorders. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 16, 199-214.