Nicholas Henriksen

My research engages with topics at the phonetics-phonology interface. Two broad questions that drive my research are: (i) Do language users hold abstract, non-surface true representations of the sounds that they produce?  If so, how can that be modeled?; and (ii) To what extent is the phonetic detail of speech part of “phonological grammar” or speakers’ knowledge?  My earliest publications focused on question intonation, working primarily within the autosegmental-metrical framework of intonational structure. More recently, I have begun to explore theoretical questions related to sound change in sub-varieties 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 (Harvard University). 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. 

Selected recent publications

Nicholas Henriksen & Lucas Rubin. (2025). Beyond distinción: Media, identity, and the strategic use of /s/ and /θ/ in Andalusian Spanish. Journal of Sociolinguistics. 

Coetzee, Andries, W., Nicholas Henriksen, & Lorenzo García-Amaya. (2025). Cross-language interactions of phonetic and phonological processes: Intervocalic plosive lenition in Afrikaans-Spanish bilinguals. Studies in Second Language Acquisitition, 47(1), 257–281. 

Nicholas Henriksen, Amber Galvano & Micha Fischer. (2023). Sound change in Western Andalusian Spanish: Investigation into the actuation and propagation of post-aspiration. Journal of Phonetics, 98, 1–12. 

Henriksen, Nicholas, Shayna Greenley, & Amber Galvano. (2023). Sociophonetic investigation of the Spanish alveolar trill /r/ in two canonical-trill varieties. Language and Speech, 66(4), 896–934. 

Fafulas, Stephen, Nicholas Henriksen, & Erin O’Rourke. (2022). Sound change and gender-based differences in isolated regions: Acoustic analysis of intervocalic phonemic stops by Bora-Spanish bilinguals. Linguistics Vanguard, 8(s5), 557–568. 

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.

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?

Spanish 487: Sociophonetics of Spanish and Galician 

RomLang 528: Teaching the Romance languages 

Research areas

Spanish phonetics & phonology, intonation, prosody, sociophonetics, experimental phonetics, second language speech learning

Affiliations

• Romance Languages and Literatures
• Linguistics