Steven Moran

Scientific Director

Office: AND-4.78

Andreasstrasse 15
8050 Zürich
Campus Oerlikon

Steven manages LiRI's scientific direction. He contributes to the development of LiRI by supporting the service area managers, project acquisition, and is responsible for implementing the LiRI vision as set forth by the steering committee. In addition to his LiRI responsibilities, Steven is an assistant professor in the Institute of Biology at the University of Neuchâtel, where he is director of the Language Evolution Lab, as part of his SNSF Eccellenza Professorial Fellowship, Evolution of phonetics and phonology (EVOPHON; 2020-2026). He is also the executive director and moderator of the LINGUIST List.

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Publications

2026
- Friedrichs, D., Guerrini, U., Ekström, A., Dellwo, V., & Moran, S. (2026). Vocal-tract length estimation from vowel formants benchmarked against acoustic pharyngometry Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 159, 5650–5666. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0044192
- Le Floch, A., Girard-Buttoz, C., Azaiez, T. S., Bande, N., Wittig, R. M., Moran, S., Zuberbühler, K., & Crockford, C. (2026). Rule-based sequences in sooty mangabey vocal communication Royal Society Open Science, 13, 251944. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.251944
- Ekström, A. G., Tennie, C., Moran, S., & Everett, C. (2026). The Phoneme as a Cognitive Tool Topics in Cognitive Science, 18, 43–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.70021
- Tennie, C., Moran, S., Jon-And, A., & Ekström, A. G. (2026). Biocultural push-and-pull shapes phonemic repertoires (S. Hartmann, M. Sibierska, M. Fröhlich, M. Josserand, Y. Jadoul, K. Mudd, T. Matzinger, J. Nölle, M. Pleyer, S. Wacewicz, & P. Żywiczyński, Eds.; XVI; p. 97). Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistic. https://evolangconf.github.io/2026/proceedings/papers/evolang16_paper_97.pdf
- Danner, T., & Moran, S. (2026). Female vocal tracts are optimized for speech (S. Hartmann, M. Sibierska, M. Fröhlich, Y. Jadoul, M. Josserand, T. Matzinger, K. Mudd, J. Nölle, M. Pleyer, S. Wacewicz, & P. Żywiczyński, Eds.; XVI; pp. 66–71). Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistic. https://evolangconf.github.io/2026/proceedings/papers/evolang16_paper_118.pdf

2025
- Ekström, A. G., Karakostis, Dr. F. A., Snyder, W. D., & Moran, S. (2025). Rethinking Hominin Air Sac Loss in Light of Phylogenetically Meaningful Evidence Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 34, e70019. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.70019
- Friedrichs, D., Ekström, A. G., Nolan, F., Moran, S., & Rosen, S. (2025). Static spectral cues serve as perceptual anchors in vowel recognition across a broad range of fundamental frequencies Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 158, 1560–1572. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0039058
- Sæbø, L. M., Grossman, E., & Moran, S. (2025). Tonogenesis Diachronica, 42, 451–478. https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.24022.sae
- Gallot, Q., Tillé, Y., Depriester, C., Moran, S., & Zuberbühler, K. (2025). A primate grammar enabling incremental processing IScience, 28(4), 112229. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.112229
- Ekström, A. G., Gärdenfors, P., Snyder, W. D., Friedrichs, D., McCarthy, R. C., Tsapos, M., Tennie, C., Strait, D. S., Edlund, J., & Moran, S. (2025). Correlates of Vocal Tract Evolution in Late Pliocene and Pleistocene Hominins Human Nature, 36, 22–69. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-025-09487-9
- Silva, C., & Moran, S. (2025). Consonant stability in Portuguese-based creoles Diachronica, 42, 82–117. https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.23006.sil

2024
- Moran, S., Eisen, E., Nikolaev, D., & Grossman, E. (2024). Operationalizing Borrowability: Phonological Segments as a Case Study Language. Journal of the Linguistic Society of America, 100, 671–698. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2024.a947038
- Gallot, Q., Depriester, C., Moran, S., & Zuberbühler, K. (2024). A non-human primate combinatorial system for long-distance communication IScience, 27, 111172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2024.111172
- Friedrichs, D., Lancheros, M., Kirkham, S., He, L., Clark, A., Lutz, C. F., Dellwo, V., & Moran, S. (2024). Temporal Co-Registration of Simultaneous Electromagnetic Articulography and Electroencephalography for Precise Articulatory and Neural Data Alignment 3120–3124. https://doi.org/10.21437/interspeech.2024-1299
- Ekström, A. G., Gannon, C., Edlund, J., Moran, S., & Lameira, A. R. (2024). Chimpanzee utterances refute purported missing links for novel vocalizations and syllabic speech Scientific Reports, 14, 17135. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-67005-w
- Chodroff, E., Pažon, B., Baker, A., & Moran, S. (2024). Phonetic Segmentation of the UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive 12724–12733. https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.1114/
- Benítez-Burraco, A., & Moran, S. (2024). Editorial: The adaptive value of languages: non-linguistic causes of language diversity, volume II Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1387290. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1387290
- Dediu, D., Lin, J., Moisik, S. R., & Moran, S. (2024). Dental fricatives: Patterning, evolution, and factors affecting a rare class of speech sounds In F. A. Karakostis & G. Jäger (Eds.), Biocultural evolution : an agenda for integrative approaches (pp. 143–178). Kerns Verlag. https://doi.org/10.51315/9783935751384.007

2023
- Lameira, A. R., & Moran, S. (2023). Life of p: A consonant older than speech BioEssays, 45, 2200246. https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.202200246
- Moran, S., Easterday, S., & Grossman, E. (2023). Current research in phonological typology Linguistic Typology, 27, 223–243. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2022-0069

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Steven Moran

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2026

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2024

2023

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