Noah Elkins
Linguist
Welcome to my website!
I am Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Haverford College, having completed my Ph.D. at UCLA in 2023.
The empirical focus of my work is Mam, a Mayan language of Guatemala. I'm interested in answering questions about Mam's syntax and phonology, and how the two interrelate.
Recent News
Justin Royer, Tessa Scott and I just presented "Severing the internal argument from the verb: the case of Mam" at TripleA 11 at Nantes Université. [handout]
My paper "Displacing the PStem" is out at The Linguistic Review. [link]
My Phonetics and Phonology course at Haverford was recently written up in Haverblog's "Cool Classes" series.
Research
Submitted
Fixed VSO in Mayan: a prosodic or syntactic innovation? Ms. Submitted.
Two novel aspectual constructions in Todos Santos Mam. Ms. Submitted.
Pied-piping with inversion in Mam: a parallel to syntactic ergativity. Ms. Submitted.
Selected publications
To appear. Super-extended ergativity in Mam. Submitted to Proceedings of WCCFL 42. [with Justin Royer and Tessa Scott].
To appear. Free relative clauses in Mam. Submitted to Proceedings of WSCLA 26. [with Colin Brown]. [pdf]
2023. Displacing the PStem. The Linguistic Review 40(4), 527-560. [link]
2023. A prominence account of the Northern Mam weight hierarchy. Proceedings of AMP 2022. With Jennifer Kuo. [pdf]
2022. Antipossession and nominalization in Mam. Proceedings of WAIL 24. [pdf]
2021. Malagasy /nr/-strengthening within and across prosodic boundaries. Proceedings of AFLA 28. With Jacob Aziz. [pdf]
In Prep
Headless relative clauses in Mam. Ms., with Colin Brown.
Theses
2023. The interplay of syntax and prosody in Mam. Ph.D. dissertation, UCLA. [link]
2020. Prefix independence: typology and theory. MA thesis, UCLA. [pdf]
Selected Presentations
2024
Severing the internal argument from its verb: the case of Mam [with Justin Royer and Tessa Scott]. Presented at the 11th TripleA Workshop, 11-12 June, 2024. [handout]
Directionals and argument structure in Mam [with Justin Royer and Tessa Scott]. Presented at the 2024 Workshop on the Structure and Constituency of Languages of the Americas (WSCLA), April 26-28, 2024. [handout]
Super-extended ergativity in Mam [with Justin Royer and Tessa Scott]. Presented at the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL) 42, April 12-14, 2024. [handout]
Pied-piping with inversion: a parallel to syntactic ergativity in Mam. Presented at Form and Analysis in Mayan Linguistics (FAMLi) VII, February 22-24, 2024. [poster]
Movement of obliques in San Juan Ostuncalco Mam. [with Colin Brown and Harold Torrence]. Presented the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA), January 4-7 2024. [handout]
2023
Headless relative clauses in Todos Santos Mam. [with Colin Brown] 2023 Workshop on the Structure and Constituency in Languages of the Americas (WSCLA). Montréal, Quebec, Canada. April 28-30. [handout]
The lu-progressive in Todos Santos Mam. 2023 Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA). Virtual. January 20-22. [handout]
2022
A prominence analysis of the Northern Mam weight hierarchy. [with Jennifer Kuo]. 2022 Annual Meeting on Phonology (AMP). Los Angles. October 21-23. [poster]
Prominence over boundary in prefix stress resistance. 19th French Phonology Network (RFP). Porto, Portugal. June 7-9.
Some empirical challenges to the PStem. 29th Manchester Phonology Meeting (MFM). Manchester, England, UK. May 25-27.
Realization of vowel length and glottalization in Todos Santos Mam. [with Jennifer Kuo]. 182nd Acoustical Society of America (ASA). Denver, CO, USA. May 23-27. [slides]
Emergent antipossessives in Todos Santos Mam. 24th Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL). Santa Barbara, CA, USA. April 8-9.
Polysemy of antipossessives and nominalizers: the view from Mam. 28th Illinois Language and Linguistics Society (ILLS). February 25-26.
The morphosyntax of Mam antipossessives. 2022 Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA). January 21-23.
2021
Malagasy /nr/-strengthening within and across prosodic boundaries. [with Jacob Aziz]. 28th Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association. May 25-27.
Prefix independence as root-initial percept maximization. 43rd Deutsches Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS). February 24-26.
Teaching
Upcoming teaching (Fall 2024, Haverford College)
LING 115: Phonetics and Phonology
LING 399: Senior Thesis Seminar
Past teaching experience
At Haverford College
Introduction to Linguistics (LING 101)
Phonetics and Phonology (LING 115)
The Structure of Mam (LING 216)
At UCLA (* = primary instructor)
Phonology II (LING 165A)
Applied Phonetics (LING 102)
Applied Phonology (LING 119)
Introduction to General Phonetics (LING 103)
Introduction to Linguistic Analysis (LING 20)*
Introduction to the Study of Language (LING 1)
Fundamentals of Translation and Interpreting (LING 144)
At Macalester College
The Sounds of Language (LING 120)
Linguistic Analysis (LING 301)