[miˈk̟ɛɫ simoˈnət]
Research & Scholarship. My work is in the fields of phonetics and phonology within the tradition known as Laboratory Phonology. Laboratory phonologists employ the auxiliary theories and methods of instrumental phonetics and experimental psycholinguistics to investigate phonological knowledge, the mental representation of sounds and sound patterns. I am particularly concerned with the phonetics-phonology interface. Within laboratory phonology, my main area of interest and expertise is phonetic and phonological variation and change, with a focus on Iberian Romance (in particular, Catalan and Spanish). A second area of expertise of mine comprises bilingual and second-language phonological competence, which I study by analyzing the production, perception, and processing of the sounds and (the phonological structure of) words in (emergent) bilinguals. My publications have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Phonetics, the Journal of the International Phonetic Association, Language and Speech, Phonetica, Laboratory Phonology, Linguistics, Probus, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Second Language Research, the International Journal of Bilingualism, Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, and Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics. See Faculty Profile > Scholarly Contributions for a list of publications and Google Scholar for approximate citation impact.
Graduate Advising. I have supervised graduate student researchers in both the PhD Program in Hispanic Linguistics (Spanish and Portuguese) and the PhD Program in SLAT (Graduate College GIDP). I have directed 11 PhD dissertations so far, and I am now directing 3 concurrent PhD dissertations. Additionally, I have served as member in 16 PhD dissertation committees in various institutions, including institutions in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands. I will only consider advising dissertators who, by the time they advance to candidacy, have taken at least two graduate courses with me (SPAN 583A, and SPAN 583C or SPAN 599). Ideally, they would have also taken at least one graduate course in statistics (e.g., LING 507) and phonetics/phonology or psycholinguistics courses in the Department of Linguistics (e.g., LING 515). I recommend students in Hispanic linguistics to do a PhD minor in Linguistics to complement their education. If they are interest in Applied Linguistics, they should do a minor in SLAT.
Professional Service. I currently serve as Associate Editor of Journal of Phonetics (2022-) and used to serve as Associate Editor of Applied Psycholinguistics (2018-2021). I serve on the editorial boards of the journals Second Language Research, Applied Psycholinguistics, and Laboratory Phonology. Between January 2019 and July 2022, I was Director of Graduate Studies in Spanish & Portuguese, and I served as main graduate advisor for students in Hispanic Linguistics until May 2024. Between 2018 and 2023 (and back in 2025-), I chaired the Cognitive Dimensions concentration in the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) interdepartmental doctoral program and served on the Executive Committee of SLAT. Since August 2021, I serve as the COH IRB Liaison, which means that, among other things, I support my colleagues in COH regarding the IRB process. I am also member of the graduate faculty in the Department of Linguistics.
Vita. I graduated with a PhD in Romance Linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2008). My doctoral advisor was José I. Hualde. The other members of my dissertation committee were Jennifer Cole, Ana M. Escobar, and Zsuzsanna Fagyal. I have been at the University of Arizona since 2008, was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure in 2015, and to (full) Professor in 2023. I was born and raised on the island of Majorca, on the western Mediterranean, and my native language is (Majorcan) Catalan. My personal interests include literature (classic and literary fiction) and other forms of art, landscapes (contemplating and photographing them), and photography (monochrome landscapes and architecture).
- "The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession." Sherlock Holmes in The Valley of Fear, Arthur C. Doyle.
- "We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master." The Wild Years, Ernest Hemingway.