Zainab Hermes earned her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2018. Her dissertation used Magnetic Resonance Imaging to examine the articulation of pharyngealized speech sounds in Cairene Arabic. She is interested in experimental linguistics and has conducted research on various dialects of Arabic including her native Cairene Arabic, as well as on Lebanese, Jordanian, and Saudi Arabic.
Current Research Projects
- An MRI investigation of the vocal tract configuration during the production of back consonants in various dialects of Arabic.
- A MEG investigation of the neurological representation of diglossic code-switching between Egyptian and Standard Arabic.
- A Self-Paced Reading (SPR) study of grammatical gender acquisition among L2 learners of Arabic.
Selected Publications
Hermes, Zainab, Barlaz, Marissa, Shosted, Ryan, Liang, Zhi-Pei, and Sutton, Brad. Forthcoming. Phonetic Correlates of Pharyngealization and Pharyngealization Spread in Cairene Arabic: an rt-MRI study. Series of Studies in Arabic Linguistics: Experimental Arabic Linguistics. John Benjamins Publishing.
Shosted, Ryan, Fu, Maojing, and Hermes, Zainab. 2018. Arabic Pharyngeal and Emphatic Consonants. In A. Benmamoun and R. Bassiouney (eds.), Handbook of Arabic Linguistics. Routledge.
Hermes, Z., Barlaz, M., Shosted, R., Liang, Z.-P., and B. Sutton. 2017. “Correlates of Pharyngeal and Pharyngealized Consonants in Saudi, Lebanese, and Jordanian Arabic: an rt-MRI Study”. Proceedings of INTERSPEECH.
Hermes, Z., Wong, N., Loucks, T., and R. Shosted. 2015. “The Primary Articulation of Plain-Emphatic /s/-/sˤ/ in Lebanese Arabic: An EMA study”. Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences.
Recent & Regularly Taught Courses
- ARAB 10101-02-03 - Elementary Modern Standard Arabic
- ARAB 20101-02-03 - Intermediate Modern Standard Arabic
- ARAB 10251 - Colloquial Egyptian Arabic: Language and Culture
- ARAB 20588 - Media Arabic
- ARAB 30800 - Arabic for Heritage Learners