Research

My dissertation investigates the phonetics of Moroccan Judeo-Arabic, a critically endangered dialect now spoken primarily by elderly communities in Israel, France, and Canada, with the present study focusing on speakers born in Marrakech. Drawing on original audio and video recordings of both spontaneous speech and read stimuli — collected directly from speakers and currently being prepared for archival deposit as part of the documentary effort — I examine three phonetic phenomena: the effects of emphatic consonants on adjacent vowel formants (measured with Praat), the spectral properties of a merged sibilant system (analyzed with MATLAB), and allophonic variation in rhotics, which I find are realized as taps, trills, and approximants, with trills favored for geminate /rː/. Analyses are conducted at both group and individual-speaker levels, and are complemented by perceptual judgments from a native Moroccan Arabic speaker as a counterpoint to dictionary-based transcriptions. Effects are quantified throughout using Bayesian statistical methods in R. This research was supported by the Bilinski Foundation and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture.

Mordechai (née Gabber), S. Many ways to say /r/: Acoustic evidence for rhotic allophony in Moroccan Judeo-Arabic. In preparation.

Mordechai (née Gabber), S. Acoustic effects of emphatic consonants on adjacent vowel formants in Moroccan Judeo-Arabic. In preparation.

Mordechai (née Gabber), S. Spectral properties of merged sibilants in Moroccan Judeo-Arabic. In preparation.

Gabber, S., & Vondiziano, G. (2023). Zooming through Field Methods: Teaching language documentation remotely. Language Documentation & Conservation, 17, 23-48.  http://hdl.handle.net/10125/74689. 

Berez-Kroeker, A. L., Gabber, S., & Slayton, A. (2023). Recent Advances in Technology for Resource Creation and Mobilization in Lanuage Documentation. Annual Review of Linguistics, 9, 195-214. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031220-

120504 

Gabber, S., Yarbrough, D., Berez-Kroeker, A. L., McDonnell, B., Koller, E., & Collister, L. B. (2022). Linguistic Data Management: Online companion course to The Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management. Website: www.linguisticdatamanagement.org 

Mordechai (née Gabber), S. (2026, June 26-28). Acoustic Evidence for Rhotic Allophony in an Obsolescing Dialect (Moroccan Judeo-Arabic). [Poster presentation]. LabPhon, hybrid University of Quebec in Montreal and virtual.

Mordechai (née Gabber), S. (2025, December 1-5). Rhotic Variation in Moroccan Judeo-Arabic. [Poster presentation]. 189th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Honolulu.

Gabber, S., & Vondiziano, G. (2023, March 2-5). Field Methods Beyond the Classroom: For every door closed, a Zoom window opens. [Poster presentation]. International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation (ICLDC 8), virtual.

Gabber, S. (2022, September 5-9). Kubulau Fijian Stress: A virtual pilot study. [Paper presentation]. Conference on Oceanic Linguistics (COOL 12), hybrid University of French Polynesia and virtual.  

Gabber, S., & Ohara-Saft, S. (2022, September 5-9). Kubulau Fijian Tense and Aspect. [Paper presentation]. Conference on Oceanic Linguistics (COOL 12), hybrid University of French Polynesia and virtual.  

Gabber, S. (2022, January 6-9). Online Companion Course to Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management. [Poster presentation]. Linguistic Society of America (LSA 2022), Scholarly Communication in Linguistics Resource Workshop and Poster Session, virtual. 

Gabber, S., & Vondiziano, G. (2021, October 15-17). Zooming through Field Methods: Remote language documentation in the university classroom. [Paper presentation]. Arizona Linguistics Circle (ALC 15), hybrid University of Arizona and virtual.