Hi! I'm Anges, a 3rd year graduate student
in the Linguistics Department at
Northwestern University.

I'm interested in studying switched-dominance bilingualism, especially
Vietnamese heritage speakers' speech production and perception.

About Me


My current research explores how Vietnamese-English heritage speakers represent shared speech sounds (that is, "similar" sounds that exist in both language inventories) within their bilingual mind -- are these phonetic categories blended, or bordered? In particular, I'm interested in any patterns in the spectral shaping of vowels produced in both languages by switched-dominance bilinguals, and what those patterns might say about how humans acquire language.

Before coming to Northwestern, I completed my BA in Linguistics and minors in Computer Science, Psychology, and Cognitive Science from UC San Diego.

Research

Blended or Bordered? Shared Vowel Space Patterns in Vietnamese-English Bilinguals. (M.A. Project)
Vu, Anges
2024 - 2025

  • Designed a novel corpus of Vietnamese-English heritage speaker productions to investigate speech variation across languages
  • Developed a processing pipeline to systematically and automatically annotate and analyze 4000+ audio recordings
  • Presentations: QP Fest 2025 (talk); Acoustical Society of America 2026 (to be submitted for talk/poster & publication)

Perception precedes production past preschool, but children may learn the uncertainty of their own speech sounds.
Creel, S., Vu, A, & McCrary Kambourakis, K.
2022 – 2024

  • Coordinated and conducted language comprehension/production studies with children between 3-5 years of age using eye tracking devices
  • Developed novel procedures and protocols for in-person and online experiments
  • Presentations: 49th Boston University Conference on Language Development (talk)

Teaching

Sound Patterns in Human Language

[Fall 2024] Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University
Instructor: Jennifer Cole
[Spring 2026] Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University
Instructor: Jennifer Cole

Affiliations

At Northwestern, I am affiliated with the Speech and Communication Group and the Sound Lab,
and am advised by Ann Bradlow and Matt Goldrick.

CV

Contact