Alona Kononenko-Szoszkiewicz, PhD

🎓 I’m a linguist focused on phonetics and phonology and an AI-enthusiast. By applying data-driven and computational methods I study rules and patterns governing permissible combinations of sounds in a particular language.

🔬 My research relies on corpus linguistics and natural language processing (Python) to study phonological systems of different languages and early child language acquisition. I also conduct bibliometric research using Scopus to analyze scholarly trends and evaluate academic impact.

🎧 I continuously develop Net Auditory Distance Calculator by incorporating additional languages. Recently, data for Belarusian and Turkish has been added to the database, enabling detailed phonotactic analysis and cross-linguistic comparisons.

🌍 Beyond academia, I translate and interpret between Ukrainian, English, Polish, and Russian, and I enjoy spending time mountaineering.

news

May 08, 2025	Thrilled to announce the launch of FOSTERLANG: the new EU Horizon project aiming to boost Europe’s minoritised languages! 🌍🗣️✨ As a proud member of the FOSTERLANG consortium, I’m excited to work alongside an inspiring network of universities, research institutes and community organisations to create the Linguistic Capital Road Map and empower language communities across the continent. Learn more here 🔗
Mar 31, 2025	📝 Submitted our talk “When ‘No’ Goes Astray: A Blind Alley Development in the Early Acquisition of Polish Negative Sentences” (with W. U. Dressler) to the 53rd Poznań Linguistic Meeting (PLM2025) 🤞
Mar 26, 2025	📢 Our paper “Phonotactics and morphonotactics of word-initial clusters in Belarusian: A corpus-based study” (with Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Dziyana Sabaleuskaya, Paulina Żydorowicz, and Alona Kononenko-Szoszkiewicz) has been accepted for the 58th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea 🎉
Jan 20, 2024	🧠 Our poster “A Blind Alley Development in the Early Acquisition of Polish Negative Sentences” (co‑authored with W.U.Dressler) has been accepted for presentation at The Mental Lexicon Conference, held this June at McGill University, Canada. 📄 Check the poster (PDF)

selected publications

IJL

(Mor)phonotactics of Ukrainian: The Study of Word-Initial Consonant Clusters

A. Kononenko-Szoszkiewicz

Italian Journal of Linguistics, 2023

Abs HTML

The present paper aims to provide the first analysis of Ukrainian phonotactics and morphonotactics, compare them qualitatively and quantitatively, and explain the difference between these two perspectives. Further, the paper explores the morphological complexity of consonant clusters in the Ukrainian language. The research is limited to consonant clusters in word-initial position compared to earlier studies in other Slavic languages, namely Russian and Polish. With respect to markedness, two hypotheses were tested, suggesting that morphonotactic clusters are expected to be less preferred than phonotactic, and that cluster preferability is directly proportional to frequency. Additionally, there have been discussed predictions of clusters’ preferability derived from the Net Auditory Distance principle.