My research focuses on the sound patterns of human language (i.e. phonology), especially as they interact with word structure (i.e. morphology) and sentence structure (i.e. syntax). Individual topics include grammatical tone, the interaction of tone/pitch and segments, vowel harmony, prosodic constituency, paradigm uniformity effects, allomorphy, and clitic alignment — see my Research page for more. A major component of this work involves careful typological and descriptive work on African languages, especially those of the Niger-Congo language family stretching across the continent. Crucial to these efforts is in situ fieldwork, which I have done extensively in Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

For a complete list of publications, see my CV.

Feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss my research, or have questions on life at ZAS and Berlin.

Recent news

• Feb 2024 — Internal presentation at ZAS, “Analytic issues in Limba, a Niger-Congo isolate of Sierra Leone” [handout]

• Feb 2024 — Talk at OCP21, Leipzig, DE, “Tonal exchange rules in Khoekhoe: The role of defective nodes and prosodic subcategorization” [handout]

• Feb 2024 — Colloquium at MIT, “Phonological locality and constraints on exponent shape” [handout] [refs]

• Feb 2024 — Minicourse at MIT, “Grammatical tone and current linguistic theory” [handout day 1] [handout day 2] [references]

• Feb 2024 — Colloquium at Princeton University, “Locality and linguistic theory: The crucial role of African tone languages” [slides] [refs] [bib]