Megha Sundara

Professor, Department Chair, and Bruce Hayes Centennial Term Chair in Linguistics

Phone: 310-825-0041
Office: 2101S Campbell Hall

Research Interests: Phonetics, Speech Perception, Infants

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She, her, hers

Education

Ph.D. 2005, McGill University

Journal Publications

Morpho-phonology

  • Sundara, M., & Breiss, C. (2026). How infants learn segmental phonotactics in their native language: Integrating insights from machine learning and adult and infant experiments. Cognition, 273, 106525.  doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2026.106525 (16 pgs)
  • Liang, K., & Sundara M. (2025). Infants discover English suffixes allomorph by allomorph. Journal of Child Language, 1-10. doi:10.1017/S0305000925100160
  • Mayer, C., Kondur, A., & Sundara, M. (2025). The UCI Phonotactic Calculator: An online tool for computing phonotactic metrics. Behavioral Research Methods, Instruments and Computers, 57(218), 1-17. doi.org/10.3758/s13428-025-02725-z
  • Breiss, C.M., Hayes, B.P., Sundara M., & Johnson, M.E. (2025). Modeling how suffixes are learned in infancy. Cognitive Science, 49(3), e70047. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70047
  • Solá-Llonch, E., & Sundara, M. (2025). Young infants’ sensitivity to vowel harmony is independent of language experience. Infant Behavior and Development, 78, 102032
  • Jo, J., Sundara, M., Breiss, C. (2024). Predicting language outcomes at age 3 using individual differences in morphological segmentation in infancy. Infant Behavior and Development, 77, 102001, doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2024.102001
  • Jo, J., & Sundara, M. (2024). Remote collection of language samples from 3-year-olds. Journal of Child Language, 1–14. Advance online publication. doi.org/10.1017/S0305000924000643
  • Xu, L., Solá-Llonch, E., Wang, H., & Sundara, M. (2024). A meta-analytic review of morphological priming in Semitic languages. Mental Lexicon, doi.org/10.1075/ml.00024.xu
  • Sundara, M., Zhou, Z.L., Breiss, C., Katsuda, H., & Steffman, J. (2022). Infants’ developing sensitivity to native language phonotactics: A meta-analysis. Cognition, 221, 104993
  • Kim, Y. J., & Sundara, M. (2021). 6-month-olds are sensitive to English morphology. Developmental Science, e13089. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13089
  • Sundara, M., White, J., Kim, Y.J. & Chong, A.J. (2021) Stem similarity modulates infants’ acquisition of phonological alternations. Cognition, 209, 104573 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104573
  • Sundara, M. (2018). Why do children pay more attention to grammatical morphemes at the ends of sentences? Journal of Child Language, 45(3), 703-716. doi.org/10.1017/S0305000917000356
  • White, J., & Sundara, M. (2014). Biased generalization of newly learned phonological alternations by 12-month-old infants. Cognition 133(1), 85-90.
  • Sundara, M., Demuth, K. & Kuhl, P.K. (2011). Sentence-position effects on children’s comprehension & production of English 3rd person singular –s. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 54, 55-71.
  • Song, J.Y., Sundara, M. & Demuth, K. (2009). Effects of phonology on children’s production of English 3rd person singular –s. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 52(3), 623-642.

Perceptual Categories

  • Peperkamp, S. & Sundara, M. (2026). Reassessing the labial-coronal asymmetry in infants’ discrimination of medial consonants. Language Development Research, 6(1) (20 pgs). https://doi.org/10.34842/ldr2025-971 
  • Steffman, J., & Sundara, M. (2026). Is perceptual learning of segmental phonotactics talker-specific? Journal of Memory and Language, 148, 104731 (20 pgs). doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2026.104731
  • Steffman, J., & Sundara, M. (2023b). Short-term exposure alters adult listeners’ perception of segmental phonotactics. JASA-Express Letters, 1;3(12): 125202. doi: 10.1121/10.0023900
  • Steffman, J., & Sundara, M. (2023a). Disentangling the role of biphone probability from neighborhood density in the perception of nonwords. Language & Speech, May 9; 238309231164982. doi: 10.1177/00238309231164982
  • Khlystova, E., Chong, A.J., & Sundara, M. (2023). Phonetic variation in English infant-directed speech: A large-scale corpus analysis. Journal of Phonetics, 100, 101267. doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2023.101267
  • Yang, M, & Sundara, M. (2019) Cue-shifting between acoustic cues: Evidence for directional asymmetry. Journal of Phonetics, 75, 27-42.
  • Sundara, M., Ngon, C., Skoruppa, K., Feldman, N. H., Onario, G. M., Morgan, J. L., & Peperkamp, S. (2018). Young infants’ discrimination of subtle phonetic contrasts. Cognition, 178, 57–66. doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.05.009
  • Sundara, M., & Scutellaro, A. (2011). Rhythmic distance between languages affects the development of speech perception in bilingual infants. Journal of Phonetics, 39(4), 505-513.
  • Sundara, M., Polka, L. & Molnar, M. (2008). Development of coronal stop perception: Bilingual infants keep pace with their monolingual peers. Cognition, 108(1), 232-242. doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2007.12.013
  • Sundara, M. & Polka, L. (2008). Discrimination of coronal stops by bilingual adults: The timing and nature of language interaction. Cognition, 106(1), 234-258.
  • Sundara, M., Polka, L. & Baum, S. (2006). Production of coronal stops by adult simultaneous bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9(1), 97-114.
  • Sundara, M., Polka, L. & Genesee, F. (2006). Language-experience facilitates discrimination of /d- ð/ in monolingual and bilingual acquisition of English. Cognition, 100(2), 369-388.
  • Sundara, M. (2005). Acoustic-phonetics of coronal stops: A cross-language study of Canadian English & Canadian French. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 118(2), 1026-1037.
  • Sundara, M., Namasivayam, A. K. & Chen, R. (2001). Observation-execution matching system for speech: A magnetic stimulation study. NeuroReport, 12(7), 1341-1344.
  • Polka, L., Colantonio, C. & Sundara, M. (2001). Cross-language perception of /d – ð/: Evidence for a new developmental pattern. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 109(5), 2190-2200.

Perception-Production Links

  • Sundara, M., Ward, N., Conboy, B., & Kuhl, P. (2020). Exposure to a second language in infancy alters speech production. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 23(5), 978-991. doi:10.1017/S1366728919000853
  • Faytak, M., Liu, S. & Sundara, M. (2020). Nasal coda neutralization in Shanghai Mandarin: Articulatory and perceptual evidence. Laboratory Phonology, 11(1):23, 1-29.

Word Segmentation

  • Katsuda, H. & Sundara, M. (2024). English-learning infants developing sensitivity to vowel phonotactic cues to word segmentation. Developmental Science, e13564. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13564
  • Mateu, V.E & Sundara, M. (2024). Constraints on acceleration in bilingual development: Evidence from word segmentation by Spanish-learning infants. Behavioral Sciences
  • Mateu, V.E. & Sundara, M. (2022). Spanish input accelerates bilingual infants’ segmentation of English words. Cognition, 218, 104936 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104936
  • Sundara, M., Mateu, V.E. (2018). Lexical stress constrains English-learning infants’ segmentation in a non-native language. Cognition, 181, 105-116. doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.08.013.
  • Polka, L., Orena, A.J., Sundara, M., & Worrall, J. (2017). Segmenting words from fluent speech in infancy: Challenges and opportunities in the bilingual context. Developmental Science Jan;20(1). doi: 10.1111/desc.12419.
  • Hendrickson, K. & Sundara, M. (2017). Fourteen-month-olds’ decontextualized understanding of words for absent objects. Journal of Child Language, 44(1), 239-254.
  • Kim, Y.J., & Sundara, M. (2015). Segmentation of vowel-initial words is facilitated by function words. Journal of Child Language 42(4), 709-733.
  • Nazzi, T., Mersad, K., Sundara, M., Yakimova, G., & Polka, L. (2014). Early word segmentation in infants acquiring Parisian French: task dependent and dialect specific aspects. Journal of Child Language, 41(3), 600-633.
  • Polka, L., & Sundara, M. (2012). Word segmentation in monolingual infants acquiring Canadian-English and Canadian-French: Native language, cross-language and cross-dialect comparisons. Infancy, 17(2), 198-232.
  • Nazzi, T., Goyet, L., Sundara, M., & Polka, L. (2012). Différences linguistiques et dialectales dans la mise en place des procédures de segmentation de la parole. Enfance, 64(2), 127-146.

Prosody

  • Yu, K., Khan, S.D., & Sundara, M. (2026). Phonological choices drive f0 range expansion and lengthening in Bengali and English infant-directed speech. Languages. Special Issue on Advances in the Acquisition of Prosody, 11(4), 68 (62 pgs). https://doi.org/10.3390/languages11040068
  • Sundara, M., & Frota, S. (2025). English-learning infants’ developing sensitivity to intonational contours. Languages, 10(7), 148. Special Issue on Advances in the Acquisition of Prosody, https://doi.org/10.3390/languages10070148
  • Chong, A., & Vicenik, C. & Sundara, M. (2018). Intonation plays a role in language discrimination in infancy. Infancy, 23(6), 795-819.
  • Vicenik, C. & Sundara, M. (2013). The role of rhythm and intonation in language and dialect discrimination by adults. Journal of Phonetics, 41(5), 297-306.
  • Ilari, B., & Sundara, M. (2009). Music listening preferences in early life: Infants’ response to accompanied versus unaccompanied singing. Journal of Research in Music Education, 56, 357-369.

Manybabies

  • Byers-Heinlein, K., Tsui, A. S. M., Bergmann, C., Black, A. K., Brown, A., Carbajal, M. J., Durrant, S., Fennell, C. T., Fiévet, A.-C., Frank, M. C., Gampe, A., Gervain, J., Gonzalez-Gomez, N., Hamlin, J. K., Havron, N., Hernik, M., Kerr, S., Killam, H., Klassen, K., … Wermelinger, S. (2021). A multilab study of bilingual infants: Exploring the preference for infant-directed speech. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245920974622
  • The ManyBabies Consortium (2020). Quantifying sources of variability in infancy research using the infant-directed speech preference. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 3 (1), 24-52. https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245919900809

Refereed Proceedings

  • Abbas, A., Xu, L., & Sundara, M. (2025). Morphological Structure in the Arabic Mental Lexicon: Productivity and Priming Effects in Nominal and Verbal Patterns. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 47. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8qq2n6sd
  • Sundara, M., Molnar, M., Frota, S. (2015). The perception of boundary tones in infancy. Presented at ICPhS, Glasgow. Published In The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015 (Ed.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Glasgow, UK: the University of Glasgow. Paper number 361, 1-4 retrieved from http://www.icphs2015.info/pdfs/Papers/ICPHS0361.pdf
  • Adani, F., Scutellaro, A., Sundara, M., & Hyams, N. (2015). Online processing of subject and object relative clauses in adults and infants. In Kern, S., Chenu, F., & Gayraud, F. (Eds.) The role of input in language acquisition. Cambridge Scholar Publishing.
  • Chong, A.J., & Sundara, M. (2016). Perceptual similarity modulates online compensation for phonological variation. In the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting on Phonology 2.
  • Chong, A.J., & Sundara, M. (2015). 18-month-olds compensate for a phonological alternation. Presented & Published in Grillo, E., & Jepson, K. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 39th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 113-126.
  • Yu, K., Khan, S.D., & Sundara, M. (2014). Intonational phonology in Bengali and English infant-directed speech. In N. Campbell, D. Gibbon & D. Hirst (Eds.) Proceedings of Speech Prosody 7. 1130-1133
  • Sundara, M. (2003) Can adult phonetic categories be predicted from statistical distribution alone? Presented at ICPhS, Barcelona Aug 3-9th. Published in Solé, M. J., Recasens, D., Romero, J. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 2329-2332.
  • Polka, L. & Sundara, M. (2003) Word segmentation in monolingual and bilingual infant learners of English and French. Presented at ICPhS, Barcelona Aug 3-9th. Published in Solé, M. J., Recasens, D., Romero, J. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 1021-1024.
  • Aravind, N., Saoji, A., & Sundara, M. (1998) Frequency specificity of the medial efferent system in Pardasani, K. R. (Ed.) Advances in Biomechanics: Proceedings of the Sixth National Conference, MACT Press, Bhopal, 231-236.

Table of Contents

Education

Journal Publications

Refereed Proceedings