My research program has two main goals: i) to make original and lasting contributions to the description and documentation of indigenous languages of the Americas; and ii) to further our collective understanding of the nature of crosslinguistic and intralinguistic variation in phonology and morphology. My interest in crosslinguistic variation stems from my deep commitment to careful study of particular languages and the desire to bring data from lesser-studied languages to bear on topics in formal phonology and morphology, topics that tend to be addressed with data from an unrepresentative handful of better-known languages. My research interests in phonology and morphology extend to the psycholinguistic investigation of phonological and morphological processing in order to better understand patterns of morphophonological variation in morphologically complex languages.
Much of my research is based on data from Choguita Rarámuri (Tarahumara), a Uto-Aztecan language spoken in Northern Mexico. I have been carrying out fieldwork on this language since 2003. Together with students, I have also worked with native speakers of Ixpantepec Nieves Mixtec (Tu'un Savi; Oto-Manguean) and Ja'a Kumiai (Yuman) in San Diego/Baja California. More recently, and in collaboration with Claudia Juárez Chávez, Michelle Yuan and students, I am investigating the tonal and morphosyntactic properties of San Juan Piñas Mixtec. I am especially interested in linguistic description and collaborative language documentation projects whose products serve both academic linguists and indigenous communities.
I am a member of the Linguistics Field Research Lab and the phonetics & phonology research community in San Diego (PhonCo).
As of January 2021, I am President Elect of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA). Since 2019 I am a panel member for the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP).
More details of my current research projects can be found here.
CV (pdf) (last update: May 2022)
Winter 2023
LIGN 141: Language Structures - Choguita Rarámuri, MWF 10-10:50am, AP&M 2452
Office hours: Fridays 11am-12pm (AP&M 4210 ~ zoom) or by appointment
Recent/upcoming talks, presentations and invited courses:
June 19 - July 14, 2023: Introduction to Language Documentation, Linguistic Society of America’s 2023 Summer Institute, University of Massachussets at Amherst [w/Nadine Grimm] (invited)
August 26-29, 2021: The 5th American International Morphology Meeting, Morphological Theory and Typology. (invited)
Templatic effects in Choguita Rarámuri outwardly conditioned allomorphy
July 21st, 2021: University of Leipzig IGRA colloquium lecture series.
The interaction between lexical and grammatical tone in San Juan Piñas Mixtec (Tò’òn Ndā’ví)
April 26, 2021: UC Berkeley Department of Linguistics Colloquium.
Lexical-grammatical tone interactions in San Juan Piñas Mixtec: phonological representation and orthographic implications.
April 8-10, 2021: 39th meeting of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL).
The representation of tone in San Juan Piñas Mixtec: Phonological and orthographic implications [w/Claudia Juárez Chávez and Michelle Yuan] (talk)
March 19-21, 2021: Princeton Phonology Forum (PɸF 2021), Tone and phonological theory workshop, Princeton University. (invited)
Tonal exponence and lexical-grammatical tone interactions in San Juan Piñas Mixtec
Affiliated Faculty member:
Research groups/labs:
Last updated: December 19, 2022