Students
I work with graduate and undergraduate students in three main areas:
- historical linguistic models (patterns of language change, linguistic diversification and phylogeny, and reconstruction methodology)
- Indo-European linguistics (especially Anatolian, Celtic, Greek, Indo-Iranian, and Latin)
- linguistics of indigenous languages of California and western North America (documentation, philology, and analysis)
See below for specific projects.
Dissertations directed
A phonologically oriented grammar of Jao (in progress)
Raksit T. Lau-Preechathammarach
From voice quality to tone: Multilingualism in northeast Thailand and shifting cue weights (2022; co-chair with Susan Lin)
Participatory Action Research in Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec language revitalization (2021; co-chair with Leanne Hinton)
Kayla Begay (Assistant Professor of Native American Studies, Humboldt State University)
Wailaki grammar (2017; co-chair with Justin Spence)
Clare Sandy (Lecturer, Linguistics, San José State University)
Prosodic prominence in Karuk (2017)
Chundra Cathcart (Postdoctoral researcher, Indo-European Studies, University of Zürich)
Tom Recht (Lecturer, Classics, San Francisco State University)
Verb-initial clauses in Ancient Greek prose: A discourse-pragmatic study (2015)
David Kamholz (Lexical Data Specialist, PanLex project, Long Now Foundation)
Austronesians in Papua: Diversification and change in South Halmahera-West New Guinea (2014)
Justin Spence
Language change, contact, and koineization in Pacific Coast Athabaskan (2013)
Hannah Haynie (Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, University of Colorado Boulder)
Studies in the history and geography of California languages (2012)
David Goldstein (Asst. Prof. of Linguistics and Indo-European Studies, UCLA)
Wackernagel's Law in fifth-century Greek (2010, Classics; co-chaired with Donald Mastronarde)
Gabriela Caballero (Prof. of Linguistics, UC San Diego)
Choguita Rarámuri (Tarahumara) phonology and morphology (2008)
Esther J. Wood (Research Asst. Prof. and Asst. Director, Language Science Center, University of Maryland)
Mary Paster (Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics, Pomona College)
Phonological conditions on affixation (2006; co-chaired with Sharon Inkelas)
Lisa Conathan (Head of Special Collections, Williams College Libraries)
The linguistic ecology of northwestern California: Contact, functional convergence and dialectology (2004)
Matthew L. Juge (Assoc. Prof. of Modern Languages, Texas State University, San Marcos)
Tense and aspect in periphrastic pasts: Evidence from Iberian Romance (2002)
Dissertation committees
Katherine R. Russell
Nasalization in Atchan at the syntax-phonology interface (in progress; Hannah Sande, chair)
Carolyn A. Hawkshaw
The "secret inclination" of the German weak masculine nouns: A case of usage-driven paradigmatic change, a diachronic corpus study 1350–1900 (2023; Thomas Shannon and Irmengard Rauch, co-chairs)
Mike Arrigo
Rumor Has It: The Press Conditional in French and Spanish (2020; Mairi McLaughlin, chair)
Phonetic attention and predictability: How context shapes exemplars and guides sound change (2017; Keith Johnson, chair)
Jenelle Thomas (Departmental Lecturer in French Linguistics, Christ Church, Oxford)
"Vous êtes hombre de bien": A study of bilingual family letters to and from colonial Louisiana, 1748-1867 (2017; Mairi McLaughlin, chair)
Stephanie Farmer (Visiting Asst. Professor, Macalaster College)
Establishing reference in Máíhikí (2015; Lev Michael, chair)
Daisy Rosenblum (Asst. Prof., First Nations Languages Program, University of British Columbia)
A grammar of space in Kwak'wala (2015, UC Santa Barbara; Marianne Mithun, chair)
John Sylak-Glassman (Postdoctoral researcher, Center for Language and Speech Processing, Johns Hopkins University)
Defining natural classes: The phonology and typology of post-velar consonants (2014; Sharon Inkelas, chair)
Amy Campbell (Software engineer, Etsy)
The morphosyntax of discontinuous exponence (2012; Line Mikkelsen, chair)
Reiko Kataoka (Lecturer, Department of Linguistics, San Jose State University)
Phonetic and cognitive bases of sound change (2011; Keith Johnson and John J. Ohala, co-chairs)
Athena Kirk (Asst. Prof. of Classics, Cornell University)
The list as treasury in the Greek world (2011, Classics; Leslie Kurke, chair)
Michael Houser
The syntax and semantics of do so anaphora (2010; Line Mikkelsen, chair)
Christopher Rogers
A comparative grammar of Xinkan (2010, Linguistics, University of Utah; Lyle Campbell, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, chair)
Maziar Toosarvandani (Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics, UC Santa Cruz)
Association with foci (2010; Line Mikkelsen, chair)
Molly Babel (Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics, University of British Columbia)
Phonetic and social selectivity in speech accommodation (2009; Keith Johnson, chair)
Teresa McFarland
The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac (2009; Sharon Inkelas, chair)
Israel Sanz-Sánchez (Assoc. Prof. of Languages, West Chester University)
The diachrony of New Mexican Spanish, 1683-1926: Philology, corpus linguistics, and dialect change (2009, Spanish and Portugese; Jerry Craddock and Milton Azevedo, co-chairs)
†Corinne Crawford (2008 posthumous Ph.D., Classics; Erich S. Gruen, chair)
Nicholas Fleisher (Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee)
Adjectives and infinitives in composition (2008; Line Mikkelsen, chair)
Yuni Kim (Lecturer in Linguistics, University of Essex)
Phonology and morphology of San Francisco del Mar Huave (2008; Sharon Inkelas, chair)
William M. Short (Assoc. Prof. of Classics, University of Texas at San Antonio)
Sermo, sanguis, semen: An anthropology of language in Roman culture (2007, Classics; Ellen Oliensis, chair)
Jeff Good (Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics, University at Buffalo)
Strong linearity: Three case studies towards a theory of morphosyntactic templatic constructions (2003; Larry M. Hyman, chair)
Suzanne Wertheim (Worthwhile Research and Consulting)
Linguistic purism, language shift, and contact-induced change in Tatar (2003; Leanne Hinton, chair)
Alan Yu (Prof. of Linguistics, University of Chicago)
The morphology and phonology of infixation (2003; Sharon Inkelas, chair)
Jonathan Barnes (Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics, Boston University)
Positional neutralization: A phonologization approach to typological patterns (2002; Sharon Inkelas, chair)
Gunnar Hansson (Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics, University of British Columbia)
Theoretical and typological issues in consonant harmony (2001; Sharon Inkelas, chair)
Darya Kavitskaya (Assoc. Prof. of Slavic Languages and Literatures, UC Berkeley)
Compensatory lengthening: Phonetics, phonology, and diachrony (2001; Sharon Inkelas, chair)
†Susan Guion (late Prof. of Linguistics, University of Oregon)
Velar palatalization: Coarticulation, perception, and sound change (1996, University of Texas at Austin; Nicola J. Bessell, chair)
Michael Aceto (Prof. of English, East Carolina University)
Variation in the English-derived creole of Bastimentos, Panama (1995, University of Texas at Austin; Ian Hancock, chair)
Mark Davies (Prof. of Linguistics, Brigham Young University)
The evolution of causative constructions in Spanish and Portugese (1992, University of Texas at Austin; Carlos Solé, chair)
M.A. and B.A. theses advised
Justin Lei, "Word order and information structure in Yurok" (B.A. 2014)
Karie Moorman, "Polyfunctionality of -ara in Karuk" (B.A. 2014; second reader)
James Martin, "The morphology of causation in Yurok" (B.A. 2009)
Nicholas Fowler, "Regularization of the past tense in the 'unchanging' weak verbs" (B.A. 2008)
Izabella Czyzewska, "A letter from Puduhepa Queen of Hatti to Ramses II Pharaoh of Egypt (KUB 21.38 = CTH 176)" (Concordia University, Montréal M.A. 2007; external examiner)
Cécile Evers, "Slave language acquisition in the eighteenth-century gobernación of Chocó, Columbia" (2007, International Area Studies; second reader)
Jennifer Sargent-Smith, "The media in language revitalization" (B.A. 2006)
Matthew Loran, "The affirmative particle in Middle Welsh" (B.A. 2003)
Alysoun Quinby, "Dialectology of River Yurok: A preliminary exploration" (B.A. 2003)
Jason Bernard, "Latin relative clauses: Description and diachrony" (B.A. 2002)
Ruth Rouvier, "Infixation and reduplication in Misumalpan: A reconstruction" (B.A. 2002)
Ashlee Bailey, "A reconstruction of verbal reduplication in Central Pacific" (B.A. 1997)
Michael Reese, "Converging on coronal: A sound change affecting coda nasals and its perceptual explanation" (UT Austin M.A. 1995)
†Susan Guion, "The syllable structure of Arcado-Cyprian" (UT Austin M.A. 1994)
Colleen Bard, "Reduplication and the origin of the Hittite hi-conjugation" (UT Austin M.A. 1993)
Helen Gould, "Negation in Chaucer's prose" (Harvard College A.B. 1990)
Lisa Lavoie, "Word order and null subjects in Le Chevalier au Lion" (Harvard College A.B. 1989)