I study how the way we use language– especially how often and in what contexts we tend to say or sign things– influences how our languages’ phonological systems evolve over time. A central concept in my area of research is phonological contrast: when two phonetically similar signals distinguish meanings, e.g. the vowel sounds in English ‘pet’ vs. ‘pit,’ or the position and movement of the hand in ASL SILLY vs. WRONG. I’m interested in how the informational value of these contrasts– the degree to which they actually help perceivers understand what’s being said– explain a variety of changes attested across different language families at different times in history. To investigate these questions, I use tools like large language corpora, acoustic analysis of speech, and agent-based computational simulations. And because my research questions are cross-linguistic by nature, I engage with data from a range of language groups, including Germanic languages like English and Icelandic, Southeast Asian languages like Vietnamese and Hakha Lai, and West Nilotic languages like Dinka and Nuer, spoken in South Sudan and Ethiopia.

Educational History

• 2022 Ph.D. Linguistics and Germanic Studies, Indiana University Bloomington; Dissertation: The emergence of vowel quality mutation in Germanic and Dinka-Nuer: Modeling the role of information-theoretic factors using agent-based simulation; Advisor: Dr. Kelly H. Berkson
• 2016 M.A. Germanic Linguistics & Philology, Indiana University Bloomington; Thesis: The laryngeal phonology of modern Icelandic; Advisor: Dr. Tracy A. Hall
• 2013 B.S. Early Music and Germanic Studies, Indiana University Bloomington

Selected Publications

ResearchGate

• Wedel, A., & Flego, S. (under revision). Chain shifts and transphonologizations are driven by homophony avoidance.
• Flego, S., & Cohen Priva, U. (under review). A probabilistic approach to studying the phonotactic distribution of post-consonantal, pre-vocalic glides.
• Flego, S. (2025). Reconstructing Dinka-Nuer consonant-glide-vowel sequences using language-internal evidence from Agar Dinka. Radical: A Journal of Phonology, 8, 83-134.
• Flego, S., & Forrest, J. (2021). Leveraging the temporal dynamics of anticipatory vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in linguistic prediction: A statistical modeling approach. Journal of Phonetics, 88, 101093. doi: 10.1016/j.wocn.2021.101093
• Flego, S., & Berkson, K. (2020). A phonetic illustration of the sound system of Icelandic. Indiana University Linguistics Club Working Papers, 20.
• Flego, S. (2018). Estimating vocal tract length by minimizing non-uniformity of cross-sectional area. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics 176ASA, 35, 060003. doi: 10.1121/2.0001000