Linguistics material from David Odden
What I do:
My research focuses on the description of understudied languages, mainly the languages of Africa (especially Eastern and Southern Africa), and emphasizing the theory of symbolic morpho-phonemic computations, but also branching out areally to Saami and Kurdish. My central goal is testing aspects of linguistic theory against new data from undescribed and underdescribed languages. Much of my research focuses on tonal systems, feature theory, the theory of syntax-phonology interaction, and component interaction. These are the lesser-known languages that I've worked on.
I am currently working on a description of the Bantu language Llogoori, under the auspices of the NSF-supported Luyia Languages project, managed by Michael R. Marlo, University of Missouri.
Some papers
Phonological Ontology (version 1)
Radical substance-free phonology and feature learning, Canadian Journal of Lingustics 67
A Radical Substance-Free Phonology of Logoori, Journal of Universal Language 22
Geminate blockage in Logoori harmony with no added machinery , now in Loquens 6(2)
Tonal Melodies in the Logoori Verb, Brentari & Lee eds. Shaping phonology
Formal Phonology (in Nordlyd 40)
Tone in African Languages (Vossen & Dimmendaal eds.)
Features impinging on tone (Clements festschrift)
Bantu Phonology (Oxford Handbooks Online)
The representation of length (Companion to Phonology), plus addendum on ternary length which was supposed to be on the books webpage.
Rules v. constraints (Goldsmith et al. Handbook of phonological theory)
Phonology ex nihilo. This is a handout from an informal talk which I gave in 2006 at Universitetet i Tromsø, outlining a theory of Radical Substance Free Phonology where the set of features is not universally predetermined and based on phonetic properties.
Saami materials
This page contains various items coming from my work on North Saami with Berit Anne Bals Baal and Curt Rice.
Contact: You can email me at gmail: my username is my first name dot last name