Linguistics Field Research Lab
Linguistics Field Research Lab
We are faculty and students dedicated to the teaching and research of underdocumented and endangered languages. We are currently engaged in research projects on: Amahuaca (Panoan), Choguita Rarámuri (Uto-Aztecan), San Juan Piñas Mixtec (Oto-Manguean), Diné Bizaad (Athabaskan), Rere, Tira and Moro (Kordofanian), Hmong (Hmong-Mien), Northern Toussian (Niger-Congo), Teotepec Eastern Chatino (Oto-Manguean), Khalkha Mongolian (Mongolic), Kalmyk Oirat (Mongolic) and Azerbaijani (Turkic).
We are committed to linguistic description and collaborative language documentation projects whose products serve both linguists and communities.
Many of our research projects have arisen through our Field Methods/Fieldwork classes:
2024: Tigre (Semitic, Eritrea)
2023: Southern Uzbek (Turkic, Afghanistan)
2022: Ekegusii (Bantu, Kenya)
2022: San Juan Piñas Mixtec (Oto-Manguean; Mexico)
2021: Todos Santos Cuchumatán Mam (Mayan; Guatemala)
2020: San Juan Piñas Mixtec (Oto-Manguean; Mexico) and Todos Santos Cuchumatán Mam (Mayan; Guatemala)
2018, 2019: Koalib (Rere - ŋ̀rɛ́ɛ́ɽɛ̀) (Kordofanian; Sudan) and San Juan Piñas Mixtec (Oto-Manguean; Mexico)
2016: Ja'a Kumiai (Yuman; Mexico)
2015: Bari (Nilotic; South Sudan)
2012, 2013: Ixpantepec Nieves Mixtec (Oto-Manguean; Mexico)
2011: Purépecha (isolate; Mexico)
2010: GiTonga (Bantu; Mozambique)
2005, 2006: Moro (Kordofanian; Sudan)
Find out about who we are, our working group, our projects, and recent news and events below.
Nina Hagen Kaldhol (Phd 2024) is now a Lecturer at the University of Oslo!
Prof. Michelle Yuan and Prof. Gabriela Caballero will be teaching courses at the upcoming LSA Summer Institute to be held at UMass, Amherst from June 19 to July 14, 2023. Prof. Michelle Yuan will be teaching a course on 'the morphosyntax of case and licensing' (with Coppe van Urk). Prof. Gabriela Caballero has been invited to teach 'introduction to language documentation' (with Nadine Grimm).
Drae Handley & Stan Rodríguez. Upcoming. Kumeyaay Language Revitalization across an International Border. 9th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation: Navigating new realities in diaspora communities. University of Hawai'i at Manoa, March 6-9, 2025.
Drae Handley & Stan Rodríguez. Upcoming. Language Immersion in the Context of Kumeyaay Revitalization. 46th American Indian Workshop: North American Indigenous Languages, Literature, and Culture & Current Research. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), March 26 - 28, 2025.
Tajudeen Mamadou Y. & Anthony Struthers-Young. 2025. Pharyngealization in Two Varieties of Toussian. Linguistic Society of America (LSA) Annual Meeting special session: Illustrating African Phonologies. Philadelphia.
Gabriela Caballero. 2024. Contrast preservation in lexical-grammatical tone interactions in San Juan Piñas Mixtec. Sound Systems of Latin America (SSLA) 4, University of Washington (invited talk).
Rachel Miles. 2024. Language Deprivation. Asia Pacific Sign Language Consultation (invited talk).
Rachel Miles. 2024. Language Acquisition at School. Professional Development Training, Gospel School for the Deaf, Suva, Fiji.
Rachel Miles & Rachel I. Mayberry. 2024. Longitudinal change in argument marking strategies in the first cohort of a new sign language. 49th Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD).
Anthony Struthers-Young. 2024. Register features and cumulativity: The representation of double downstep in Northern Toussian. Annual Meeting on Phonology (AMP). Rutgers.
Anthony Struthers-Young. 2024. Verbal grammatical tone in Northern Toussian. World Congress on African Linguistics (WOCAL) 11. University of Nairobi.
Tajudeen Mamadou Y. & Anthony Struthers-Young. 2024. Pharyngealization in the Toussian languages. World Congress on African Linguistics (WOCAL) 11. University of Nairobi.
Gabriela Caballero. 2024. Contrast preservation in lexical-grammatical tone interactions in San Juan Piñas Mixtec. Réseau Français de Phonologie – Amiens 2024 (invited talk).
Gabriela Caballero. 2024. Tono léxico y gramatical en el mixteco de San Juan Piñas: análisis fonológico e implicaciones ortográficas. Seminario Permanente de Análisis de Textos, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (invited talk).
Gabriela Caballero. 2024. Archivos documentales de lenguas del Norte de México y Sur de California: acceso, mobilización y derechos lingüísticos. Perspectivas lingüísticas sobre el noroeste de México y el suroeste de Estados Unidos, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (invited talk).
Anthony Struthers-Young. 2024. Apparent double downstep in Northern Toussian. Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL). McGill University.
Gabriela Caballero. 2024. Contrast preservation in lexical-grammatical tone interactions in San Juan Piñas Mixtec. SUNY Buffalo Department of Linguistics colloquium.
Seoyeon Jang & Jun Jie Lim. 2024. Wh-reduplication in Korean and Khalkha Mongolian. Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America 2024. New York City.
Rose, Sharon. 2024. Cross-word spreading and prosody-syntax domains. Phonological domains and what conditions them workshop. University of California, Berkeley.
Hassen, Himidan & Sharon Rose. 2024. Reduplication and inflection class in Tira. World Congress on African Linguistics 11, University of Nairobi, Kenya.
Kaldhol, Nina Hagen & Sharon Rose. 2024. Case marking and word order in Moro and Tira. Annual Conference on African Linguistics 55, McGill University.
Rose, Sharon. 2024. Syntactic tone and non-myopic tone spreading in Rere. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 41. University of California, Berkeley.
Rachel Miles and Rachel Mayberry. 2023. The impact of language experience on word order in the first cohort of an emerging sign language. 48th Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD). Boston University.
Rachel Miles and Rachel Mayberry. 2023. The role of language experience in the first cohort of an emerging sign language. Many Paths to Language (MPaL). Max Planck Institute, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Jun Jie Lim. 2023. Finiteness, agreement and subject case in two varieties of Mongolian. Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics (WAFL) 17. National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
Jun Jie Lim. 2023. Plural pronoun constructions in two varieties of Mongolian. The Fifth International Conference on Mongolic Linguistics. National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
Jun Jie Lim. 2023. Nominalisations without DP: Dissociating genitive case assignment and possessor agreement. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL) 41. University of California Santa Cruz.
Claudia Duarte Borquez, Gabriela Caballero, & Claudia Juárez-Chávez. 2023. Tonal upstep and downstep in San Juan Piñas Mixtec (Tò’ōn Ndā’ví). 26th Workshop on Structure and Constituency in Languages of the Americas (WSCLA 26), McGill University.
Claudia Duarte Borquez, Gabriela Caballero, Claudia Juárez-Chávez, & Michelle Yuan. 2023. Propiedades tonales y morfosintácticas de los enclíticos pronominales del mixteco de San Juan Piñas (Tò’ōn Ndā’ví). Congreso sobre Lenguas Otomangues y Vecinas IX, Oaxaca, Mexico.
Nico Tedeschi. 2023. Frames of reference in San Juan Piñas Mixtec: A methodology for remote elicitation. Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL), UC Santa Barbara.
We hosted the 53rd Annual Conference on African Linguistics! ACAL was held virtually April 7-9, 2022. Members of the lab edited the proceedings., to be appear soon with Language Science Press.
Prof. Gabriela Caballero is the current President of the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas. She co-organized the 40th anniversary conference of SSILA held online in January.
Prof. Michelle Yuan co-organized the 25th "Workshop on Structure and Constituency in Languages of the Americas" (WSCLA) together with Dr. Mike Barrie (Sogang University) and Dr. Maziar Toosarvandani (UC Santa Cruz). WSCLA brings together linguists who conduct research on indigenous languages of the Americas in order to exchange ideas across theories, language families, generations of scholars, and across the communities who are involved in language maintenance and revitalization. This year, WSCLA took place virtually on May 28-30, 2021.
The recent Annual Meeting in Phonology 6 was held at UC San Diego. It featured a "Methods in phonological data collection and analysis of underdocumented languages workshop" with three tutorials, funded by the National Science Foundation
Gabriela Caballero & Lucien Carroll presented "Underdocumented language data corpus construction" featuring Kwaras, the searchable web interface tool they co-developed with Russ Horton that links WAV audio files and time-aligned annotations produced with ELAN.
Marc Garellek presented "Electroglottography for voice analysis", and showed how it can be used for fieldwork. Michael Obiri-Yeboah helped out with the demonstration featuring EGG measures of ATR distinctions in Gua.
Bert Remijsen (U. of Edinburgh) presented a tutorial on "Investigating underdocumented tone systems" featuring languages of South Sudan.
The newly created LIGN 139: Field Methods class was taught in Spring quarter of 2018 and 2019 by visiting professor Justin McIntosh. Students in the classes worked in collaboration with Claudia Juárez, a native speaker of San Juan Piñas Mixtec (Tu'un Savi; Oto-Manguean). Claudia Duarte-Bórquez (BA 2019) presented her research from the class along with Justin and Claudia at the 22nd annual Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL) at UC Santa Barbara and at UCSD’s Undergraduate Research Conference.
In 2020, it was taught in the Fall by Emily Clem in collaboration with Angela Ramirez on Todos Santos Cuchumatán Mam.
In 2022, it was taught in Spring by Sharon Rose in collaboration with Obed Mose and Dr. Hildah Makori on Ekegusii.
Online on Zoom - we continue ongoing work on San Juan Piñas Mixtec, Tira and Zapotec.
Benin - Mark Simmons began a project on Dendi.
Burkina Faso - Anthony Struthers-Young spent part of the summer working on Northern Toussian
Mexico - members of the San Juan Piñas Mixtec team (Gabriela Caballero, Michelle Yuan, Claudia Duarte Bórquez and Mark Simmons) traveled to Oaxaca to work with members of the community
Online on Zoom! - due to covid-19 restrictions, we have adapted some of our work to an online format. Ongoing work on San Juan Piñas Mixtec and Rere, and new projects on Tira and Zapotec.
US/Scandinavia - Nina was working on Somali with members of diaspora communities in the US, Norway and Sweden.
Mexico - Gaby, José Armando and Qi were working on Ja'a Kumiai; Justin was back in Oaxaca working with the Santa Lucía Teotepec Chatino community.
US - Ray continued to document Cahuilla on the Torres-Martinez Indian Reservation in Southern California.
Ghana - Michael was carrying out documentation work on Gua in Boso, Ghana, funded by a Firebird Fellowship.
Turkey - Nese was in Turkey working on vowel harmony in Eastern Turkish dialects, with support from the Friends of the International Center.
China - Yuan was in Fujian, China to document Xiapu Min, with support from the Friends of the International Center
Russia, Azerbaijan - Matt was working with speakers of many languages this summer in Russia and Azerbaijan. He was also in Georgia on a Fulbright fellowship for 2019-20 until covid-19 cut short his research trip.
Canada - Michelle was in the community of Nain, Nunatsiavut working on Labrador Inuttut.
We're located in the Applied Physics and Math Building, room 4452
Mailing address: UCSD Linguistics Department, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0108