Jason D Smith

I am a doctoral candidate in the linguistics program at Michigan State University. where I study descriptive and theoretical syntax. My research program centers on descriptive and theoretical syntax, with a focus on bringing novel data from un- or under-studied languages to bear in the development and refinement of syntactic theory. My work has focused primary on Mende and Kono, Mande languages spoken in Sierra Leone. 

I have done field work in collaboration with researchers at Njala University in Bo, Sierra Leone, to elicit, describe, and analyze syntactic data from Mende and Kono. My primary focus is on word order, considering in particular the structure of verb phrases. More specifically, I have developed an analysis for the derivation  of canonical (OV) word order in Mende arguing that leftward movement of the object is driven by case-licensing. I have also written a series of papers that discuss particle verb-like constructions in Mende, that is verbs whose object obligatorily occurs post-verbally, encoded in a particle phrase. This research forms the basis for my dissertation, which argues that both Mende’s canonical OV and non-canonical VO word orders are derived from an underlying head-initial verb phrase. 

In addition, I have investigated wh-questions, islands, and resumption in Mende, arguing for a tripartite distinction with weak islands, strong islands, and mixed islands (relative clauses). I have also recently begun to investigate information structure in Mende, considering whether different types of focus are expressed distinctively in the language.