simonet

simonet@arizona.edu
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Faculty Profile
Simonet, Miquel
Professor

[miˈk̟ɛɫ simoˈnət]

Miquel Simonet is Professor of Spanish Language and Linguistics at the University of Arizona. His research explores how Spanish and Catalan sound systems are structured, represented, and reshaped through bilingualism, language contact, variation, and sound change. As a laboratory phonologist, he combines instrumental phonetics and experimental psycholinguistics to investigate the cognitive representation of speech sounds and sound patterns. His work addresses the phonetics-phonology interface, sociophonetic and phonological variation, phonologization and sound change, and the consequences of bilingual experience for speech production, perception, and phonological knowledge. His research has appeared in leading journals, including Journal of Phonetics, Journal of the International Phonetic Association, Language and Speech, Phonetica, Laboratory Phonology, Linguistics, Probus, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Second Language Research, International Journal of Bilingualism, Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, and Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics.

Dr. Simonet served as Associate Editor of Journal of Phonetics (2022–2025) and Applied Psycholinguistics (2018–2021). He currently serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Phonetics, Second Language Research, Applied Psycholinguistics, and Laboratory Phonology. Within the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, he has held several leadership roles, including Director of Graduate Studies and principal advisor for graduate students in Hispanic Linguistics. He has also chaired the Cognitive Dimensions concentration in the interdepartmental doctoral program in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT), serving on the program’s Executive Committee (2018–2023, 2025–present). In addition, he is the College of Humanities' Institutional Review Board (IRB) Liaison, providing guidance to faculty and researchers on human-subjects research protocols. Dr. Simonet is also affiliated with the Department of Linguistics as a member of its graduate faculty.

A dedicated mentor, Dr. Simonet has chaired or co-chaired twelve doctoral dissertations (seven in Hispanic Linguistics and five in SLAT) and has served on sixteen additional dissertation committees at institutions in the United States and abroad. He welcomes inquiries from prospective graduate students interested in phonetic and phonological variation and change, sociophonetics, laboratory approaches to Spanish phonology, and bilingual speech in societal language contact situations. He directs doctoral research in both the Hispanic Linguistics PhD program and the interdepartmental SLAT PhD program.

Dr. Simonet earned his PhD in Romance Linguistics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2008 under the supervision of José I. Hualde. He joined the University of Arizona as an Assistant Professor that same year, was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2015, and attained the rank of Professor in 2023.

In preparation:

  1. "Perceptual sensitivity to marginal phonemic contrasts: Discrimination and lexical processing of the Portuguese mid-front vowels." (with Jessica C. Tiegs)
  2. "Subphonemic detail, resyllabification, and Spanish speech segmentation." (with Helena Escalera)

Accepted:

  1. Simonet, M., and N. Henriksen (in press) The Phonetics of Spanish. (Cambridge Elements in Phonetics.) Cambridge University Press.

Published (6 most recent):

  1. Simonet, M., and J. C. Tiegs (2026) "External vowel sandhi in Castilian Spanish: An acoustic study of vowel sequences across word junctures." Language and Speech (FirstView) https:// doi.org/10.1177/00238309261419126.
  2. Simonet, M., and M. Llompart (2026) "Using offline methods to probe the bi/multilingual acquisition of phonological and phonetic domains". In Quantitative Research Methods in Multilingual Acquisition and Processing, ed. by G. Klassen and J. Schwieter. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. pages 56-80.
  3. Simonet, M., Ramírez Martínez, M., and F. Torres-Tamarit (2025) “Velar palatalization, phonologization, and sound change: An acoustic study of /k/-fronting in Majorcan Catalan.” Journal of Phonetics, 112, 101430.
  4. Llompart, M., and M. Simonet (2024) “El procesamiento fonológico en hablantes bilingües” (Phonological Processing in Bilinguals). In Dos lenguas, un cerebro: el procesamiento lingüístico en hablantes bilingües (Two Languages, One Brain: Language Processing in Bilinguals), ed. by E. Álvarez. Peter Lang, Berlin, Germany.
  5. Ramírez, M., and M. Simonet (2023) “Phonetic variants of Majorcan Catalan /ʒ/: A controlled study in societal language contact.” International Journal of Basque Linguistics and Philology, 57, 825-840.
  6. Ortín, R., and M. Simonet (2023) “Perceptual sensitivity to stress in native English speakers learning Spanish as a second language.” Laboratory Phonology, 14, 7978.

Currently Teaching

SPAN 360 – Introduction to the Linguistic Analysis of Spanish

This course serves as an introduction to the structure of the Spanish language. It's a course on how to understand Spanish grammar (and grammar or language structure as a whole) so you might critically reflect on the language to get a deep command of it on your own in the years to come. The course is organized around four basic perspectives on the study of the structure of Spanish: (1) the structure of the Spanish sound inventory, (2) the structure of Spanish words, (3) the structure of Spanish sentences, (4) the structure of the Spanish language in its societies.

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This course serves as an introduction to the structure of the Spanish language. It's a course on how to understand Spanish grammar (and grammar or language structure as a whole) so you might critically reflect on the language to get a deep command of it on your own in the years to come. The course is organized around four basic perspectives on the study of the structure of Spanish: (1) the structure of the Spanish sound inventory, (2) the structure of Spanish words, (3) the structure of Spanish sentences, (4) the structure of the Spanish language in its societies.

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SPAN 583A – Spanish Phonetics

This course serves as an introduction to the instrumental and experimental study of the sounds of Spanish, and it focuses on articulatory, acoustic, and perceptual phonetics. At the end of this course, students will be able to read and understand the primary literature on Spanish experimental phonetics as well as to conduct basic, descriptive research in this field.

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SPAN 594 – Practicum

The practical application, on an individual basis, of previously studied theory and the collection of data for future theoretical interpretation. This might include participation in collaborative research projects and development of practical skills to design and teach upper-level undergraduate courses in an area of specialization.

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To view full listing of courses offered, please visit our Course Schedule.

Course Schedule