Welcome to my homepage!
I am a PhD student at the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication at the University of Amsterdam. My project, titled The learnability of phoneme inventories (supervised by Paul Boersma and Silke Hamann), investigates the role that analytic bias plays in the typology of sound systems and sound changes. My research draws on experimental data, typological observations, and computer simulations; it combines three of my favourite topics, namely diachronic phonology and phonetics, the resonances of extralinguistic factors on linguistic typology, and neurobiologically plausible computational models of language.
With Silke Hamann, I am also investigating the fortis-lenis distinction in Standard German plosives, specifically the occurrence of prevoicing in the lenis stops.
Email: seinhorst@uva.nl