2010-2013 Choctaw Language Ideologies and their Impact on Teaching and Learning
NSF funded dissertation research on the effects of language ideologies among Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma Community Language Class participants on the choice of teaching methods, student motivations, and speaker behavior and language learning outcomes. Research required three years of direct participant observation in the Choctaw language learning community in Oklahoma and collaboration with key consultants in analysis of findings.
2007-2008 Comparative Muskogean Phonetics/Muskogean Tonogenesis: Reconstructing Proto-Muskogean Glottal Stop and Tone (M.A. Thesis)
Historical-comparative research focused on standardizing the data descriptions for 6 Muskogean languages and 3 potentially related languages so that historical relationships and phonetic correlates and changes leading to tone in the verbal system examined.
2008 Choctaw Story Performance in the Language Classroom
Research concerning teacher narrative, meta-narrative, and linguistic performance of identity in the Choctaw language classroom. Resulting paper published in Texas Linguistic Form 52:80.
Elicitation Experience
Cherokee, 2010; Navajo, 2010; Tamil, 2008; Comanche, 2007; Shawnee, 1997
Direct elicitations with 1st language speakers of four languages gained through participation in three field methods courses. Linguistic analysis of data resulted in several collaboratively produced grammars and articles archived with the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History or with the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. Publication of analysis was not permitted by the Native American groups as a condition of their generously providing speakers for student training.