Linguistics Field Research Lab

Welcome!

We are faculty and students dedicated to the teaching and research of underdocumented and endangered languages. We are currently engaged in research projects on: Moro (Kordofanian), Choguita Rarámuri (Uto-Aztecan), Ja'a Kumiai (Yuman), Huastec Nahuatl (Uto-Aztecan), Cahuilla (Uto-Aztecan), Hmong (Hmong-Mien), Gua (Guang, Kwa), Teotepec Eastern Chatino (Oto-Manguean) and Kazakh, Krygyz and Uyghur (Turkic).

We are also committed to linguistic description and collaborative language documentation projects whose products serve both academic linguists and indigenous communities.

For more information, you can contact the lab directors: Gabriela Caballero and Sharon Rose

Many of our research projects have arisen through our Field Methods/Fieldwork classes:

  • 2005, 2006: Moro (Kordofanian; Sudan)
  • 2010: GiTonga (Bantu; Mozambique)
  • 2011: Purépecha (isolate; Mexico)
  • 2012, 2013: Ixpantepec Nieves Mixtec (Oto-Manguean; Mexico)
  • 2015: Bari (Nilotic; Sudan)
  • 2016: Ja'a Kumiai (Yuman; Mexico)
  • 2018: Koalib (Rere - ŋ̀rɛ́ɛ́ɽɛ̀) (Kordofanian; Sudan)/ San Juan Piñas Mixtec (Oto-Manguean; Mexico)

Find out about who we are, our working group, our projects and recent news and events below.

News and Events

New Undergraduate Course in Linguistic Fieldwork!

  • We are delighted to announce that the newly created LIGN 139: Field Methods class is being taught in the Spring quarter of 2018 by visiting professor Justin McIntosh. Students in the class will work in collaboration with a native speaker of San Juan Piñas Mixtec (Tu'un Savi; Oto-Manguean).

Upcoming and recent presentations:

  • Gabriela Caballero. 2018. Construction-based tone patterns in Choguita Rarámuri. Oral presentation to be presented at Tonal Aspects of Language (TAL) 2018, Berlin.
  • Gabriela Caballero & Marc Garellek. 2018. Multidimensional tonal realization and prosodic variation in Choguita Rarámuri (Tarahumara). Poster to be presented at LabPhon 16, Lisbon.
  • Michael Obiri-Yeboah & Sharon Rose. 2018. Domains in Gua vowel harmony. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America.
  • Andrés Aguilar. 2017. La realización de rasgos laríngeos en el kumiai de Ja'a. VIII Conference on Indigenous Languages of Latin America, University of Texas, Austin.
  • Gabriela Caballero & Qi Cheng. 2017. Marcación de persona en el kumiai de Ja’a: composicionalidad, homofonía y neutralización. VIII Conference on Indigenous Languages of Latin America, University of Texas, Austin.
  • Gabriela Caballero. 2017. Tono y estructura morfológica en el rarámuri de Choguita (Tarahumara). VIII Conference on Indigenous Languages of Latin America, University of Texas, Austin.
  • Matthew Zaslansky. 2017. Northern Azerbaijani Sesqui-Causative Constructions (poster). The 3rd Workshop on Turkish, Turkic and Languages of Turkey, .
  • Gabriela Caballero (in collaboration with Austin German). 2017. Tone and inflection in Choguita Rarámuri (Tarahumara): implications for the typology and theory of morphological tone. University of Chicago, Linguistics Department Colloquium.
  • Gabriela Caballero & Vsevolod Kapatsinski (U of Oregon). 2017. How agglutinative? Searching for cues to meaning in Choguita Rarámuri (Tarahumara) using an amorphous model. Invited presentation for the Workshop on Morphological Typology and Linguistic Cognition, LSA Summer Institute, Kentucky.

Summer fieldwork 2017 - where were we?

  • Sudan - Sharon recorded stories and songs with the Moro community in Omdurman, Sudan.
  • Mexico - Gaby, Qi and Andrés worked on Ja'a Kumiai, and Andrés collected data on Huastec Nahuatl.
  • Ghana - Michael carried out documentation work on Gua in Boso, Ghana.
  • Kazakhstan/Krygyzstan - Adam collected data on vowel harmony in Kazakh, Krygyz, and Uyghur.
  • Azerbaijan - Matt worked on Azerbaijani and did preliminary research on Azerbaijani Sign Language.

Contact

We're located in the Applied Physics and Math Building, room 2452

Email: Gabriela Caballero (gcaballero at ucsd dot edu) and Sharon Rose (sxrose at ucsd dot edu)

Mailing address: UCSD Linguistics Department, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0108