John C. Sylak
Graduate Student
Morphology, phonetics, phonology, NE Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) languages, prosody, affix ordering
Languages: Russian, French, Lak, Imbabura Quichua, Latin
B.A. Linguistics (minor in Slavic Languages and Literatures), University of Chicago, 2008.
Contact information
Email: sylak@berkeley.edu
Personal statement
I'm interested in most linguistic work, but prefer to do research on the "P-Side" (phonetics, phonology, morphology, etc.). I like to work on languages with large consonant inventories and rich non-analytic morphology. I hope to publish on subjects related to these characteristics, such as phonotactic phenomena that are affected by large consonant inventories, suprasegmental phenomena (including prosody), and experimental phonetics. My goal is to keep learning about quantitative and computational methods in linguistics while becoming more familiar with literature in psycholinguistics, language contact, and how both of those relate to my primary interests. I hope to do fieldwork in Dagestan (southern Russia).Selected publications
2009. A One-Stem Approach to the Lak Verb. Short invited talk. Symposium, "Languages of the Caucasus and Linguistic Theory," at the 2009 LSA Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA.
2009. Lak Reduplication: Neither Morphological Nor Phonological Fixed Segmentism. Poster presented at the LSA Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA.
2008. Lak Verbal Morphology (University of Chicago Honors Thesis; email for a copy).