Maya L. Barzilai

I am a linguist and an educator passionate about sound systems of language, the interactions between language and technology, and language science communication.

I'm currently an Editorial Prompt Engineer at LinkedIn, where I use LLM prompting to build features that make sure that each member is receiving the information that's most relevant to them and their career. Before that, I was an Analytical Linguist at Grammarly, where I helped build writing assistant features for both student and enterprise users. 

During the Spring 2025, semester, I am also teaching an Introduction to Linguistics course at Barnard College.

I received my PhD from Georgetown University in December, 2020. My doctoral work comprised an investigation into the relative effects of phonetic and phonological salience in speech sound processing, drawing on experimental data from speakers of seven languages, including an under-documented language. I obtained a Master of Science in Linguistics at Georgetown University in 2017, and graduated from Middlebury College as an Independent Scholar of Linguistics in 2013.

While at Georgetown, I taught linguistics courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. I also served as the Course Coordinator for an introductory linguistics course, and developed and co-taught a new Linguistics Teaching Practicum for first-time graduate student teaching assistants. Since earning my PhD, I have taught linguistics courses at Saint Anselm College and through Georgetown's Prison Scholars Program.

My academic research has centered around phonology and its interfaces with phonetics and morphology. In my dissertation, I used psycholinguistic experiments to investigate the relative effects of phonetic and phonological salience on speech sound processing. In other work, including fieldwork with speakers of Nobiin (Nilo-Saharan; Egypt, Sudan) living in the DC area, I have investigated the interactions between phonological processes and morphological structures, and asked whether our current theories of morphophonology can adequately capture the phenomena at play in this language. These are the areas around which my teaching, mentorship, and curriculum design have also centered.