Associate Chair; Associate Professor of Spanish Linguistics
(He/Él)
About
My research focuses on issues in the phonetics and phonology of different varieties of Spanish from a theoretical perspective, employing laboratory methods to validate my claims. My earliest publications focused on question intonation, working primarily within the autosegmental-metrical framework of intonational structure. More recently, I have begun to explore sociophonetic variation across sub-varieities of Andalusian Spanish (spoken in southern Spain). At Michigan I have additionally embarked on a large-scale collaborative research project, entitled "From Africa to Patagonia: Voices of Displacement", which examines the linguistic features of Afrikaans-Spanish bilinguals who live in Patagonia, Argentina. This project originates from a collaboration that involves colleagues including Andries Coetzee (Department of Linguistics), Lorenzo García-Amaya (RLL), Ryan Szpiech (RLL), and Paulina Alberto (History). In total, our inter-generational team consists of nearly 50 collaborators.
I have published articles in Journal of Phonetics, Laboratory Phonology, Journal of the International Phonetic Association, Phonetica, Language and Speech, and Probus. In 2016 I published a co-edited volume entitled Intonational grammar in Ibero-Romance: Approaches across linguistic subfields, through John Benjamins Publishing Company (co-editors: Meghan Armstrong of University of Massachusetts & Maria del Mar Vanrell of Freie Universität Berlin). In 2021, I was awarded the Linguistic Society of America's Early Career Award.
Recent publications
Henriksen, Nicholas, Andries Coetzee, Lorenzo García-Amaya, & Micha Fischer. (2021). Exploring language dominance through code-switching: Intervocalic voiced stop lenition in Afrikaans-Spanish bilinguals. Phonetica, 78(3), 201-240.
Szpiech, Ryan, Joshua Shapero, Andries Coetzee, Lorenzo García-Amaya, Paulina Alberto, Victoria Langland, Ellie Johandes, & Nicholas Henriksen. (2020). Afrikaans in Patagonia: Language shift and cultural integration in a rural immigrant community. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 266, 33-54.
Henriksen, Nicholas & Lorenzo García-Amaya. (2019). Falsetto in interaction in Western Andalusian Spanish: A pilot study. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, 34, 101-124.
Henriksen, Nicholas. (2017). Patterns of vowel laxing and harmony in Iberian Spanish: Data from production and perception. Journal of Phonetics, 63, 106-126.
Undergraduate courses taught
Spanish 298: Introduction to Spanish Linguistics
Spanish 355: New World Spanish (Spanish in the United States)
Spanish 410: Spanish phonetics & phonology
Spanish 416: Spanish sociolinguistics
Spanish 487: Spanish second language phonology
Spanish 487: Do you speak Andalusian?
Research areas
Spanish phonetics & phonology, intonation, prosody, sociophonetics, experimental phonetics, second language speech learning
Affiliations
- Romance Languages and Literatures
- Linguistics
