Research

 My research is on American Indian languages, especially the Algonquian languages Fox (Mesquakie) and Cree, examining issues of morphology, syntax, and discourse-pragmatic relations. The theoretical framework I use in my syntactic and morphosyntactic work is Lexical Functional Grammar: see, for example, my 1991 book Plains Cree Morphosyntax, published by Garland. A second book, Morphology and Syntax of the Fox (Mesquakie) Language, is being revised for the Cambridge series of grammatical descriptions. For discussion of a more specific problem in morphology, see my 1997 article on `Fox (Mesquakie) Reduplication' in the International Journal of American Linguistics.

 Two of the problems addressed in my work on Algonquian are obviation and inverse verbs. Obviation is an opposition within third person which distinguishes the third person most central to the discourse from all other, more peripheral third persons. It is primarily a discourse-based opposition but one which plays a central role in the syntax of Algonquian languages. The inverse verbs of Algonquian are special inflected forms used when a third person subject acts upon a nonthird person object (or a peripheral third person subject acts upon the central third person object). The syntactic analysis of inverse verbs has been controversial, with some Algonquianists claiming that they are a transitive variety of passive. In my work, however, I develop several syntactic tests for grammatical relations in Cree and in Fox, which show that the inverse verbs (at least in these two Algonquian languages) are active, not passive.

 I have also written on other morphological topics, such as the morphological status of apparent endoclitics in Fox, and historical change in Plains Cree verb inflection, as well as on Algonquian word order, the semantics of (animate/inanimate) gender in Algonquian, narrative structure in Fox, the cultural significance of a traditional Fox text, and (in joint work with Anthony Buccini) syntactic problems in Pidgin Delaware, a contact language used between the Dutch and Delaware Indians in the 17th century in the New Netherland colony.

 For Fox, my research on obviation, narrative structure, and the analysis of syntactic constructions in a discourse context has been greatly aided by a remarkable corpus of texts collected in the early part of this century by the ethnologist Truman Michelson and now stored at the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. This corpus, numbering somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 pages, includes traditional myths and ethnographic information, written by monolingual Fox speakers in a syllabic writing system known as the Fox syllabary. It is without parallel in American Indian linguistics. Along with my research on linguistic issues, I have also edited, translated, and published some of the shorter texts from the Smithsonian corpus. Perhaps the most important text in the Smithsonian corpus is an extremely long (1110 ms. pages) version of the Fox origin myth, recounting the life of the trickster/culture hero Wisahkeha and his creation of the world. I have edited and translated the first third of this text; as my next book I plan to produce a scholarly edition of the entire Wisahkeha text.

 Teaching

 Each year I teach one undergraduate course (either part of our yearlong introduction to linguistics or part of the Humanities core sequence Perspectives on Language in the Humanities) and one of the core courses taken by our first year graduate students and advanced undergraduate majors (morphology or one of the syntax courses). I also offer one or two advanced graduate level courses in syntactic theory, such as Government and Binding Theory, or Lexical Functional Grammar. Every other year I teach a graduate level survey course on approaches to discourse analysis which often includes students from anthropology, psychology, and other departments. Special seminars which I have offered in recent years include the syntax of nonconfigurational languages, inverse verbs and obviation, and syntax/discourse interactions. Several years ago I taught a yearlong course on the structure of Fox; student papers from that class appeared in 1996 as a volume of Contemporary Linguistics, available from the department. I hope to be able to offer the Fox course again soon. In addition, I work closely with a number of students who have completed their coursework requirements: since joining the department in the fall of 1989 I have been a member of about 30 dissertation committees, mostly on American Indian languages or topics in syntax or discourse pragmatics.

 Some of my other professional activities include being Program Chair of the 1999 LSA meeting in Los Angeles, organizing a special session at the LSA on the history of American Indianists in linguistics, and being a member of the executive committee of the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas.

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 Page created November 13, 1998
Last updated December 14, 1998