Eberly News

In prior research, Jonah Katz, associate professor in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, had observed unusual patterns for consonants between vowels across “language after language.” Katz’s observations led him to question what most linguists believe: that these aspects of speech are learned by internalizing abstract rules about how to deal with, say, a “t” sound when it is between vowels within a word, as opposed to when it starts or ends a word.

Tatiana Trejos, assistant professor in the West Virginia University Department of Forensic and Investigative Science, and graduate student Meghan Prusinowski have developed a one-of-a-kind method that can help piece together a crime scene by literally piecing the evidence together. Or not.