[The photo above is from May 2016. I was in a boat 25 miles offshore from the Florida keys, and an American Redstart landed on my hand. If you know my book ALBERT, you can imagine how thrilled I was.]
NOTE: I'm on leave in spring 2019, but I will be on campus through April, and available to all.
I am a linguist down to my toes, and I am honored and grateful to be a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America (inducted in 2015). I haven't met an area of linguistics yet that doesn't fascinate me.
For years I analyzed the syntax of Italian, with happy detours (one of the most delightful on Chinese tonal poetry). But when I came to Swarthmore to set up a curriculum in linguistics, I needed to teach across the board. That wide responsibility plus student interest led me down new paths. Now I work on whatever languages present an intriguing phenomenon I think I have the tools to grapple with. I have worked on all components of the grammar, in synchronic and diachronic perspectives. In fall 2018 I finished work on the history of taboo constructions (over a 400 year period) in several Indo-European languages that led to the formation of degree resultatives. Currently, I'm working with a team on issues in the prosody of American newscaster speech.
Much of my work is on sign languages and more broadly cognitive issues that arise from their analysis. There are hundreds of sign languages, some indicated on this map:
Often I work with collaborators (some are alums of Swarthmore). My focus is largely on modality effects, such as how iconicity is pertinent to the syntax/semantics interface and how biomechanics affects the lexicon and enlightens us about diachronic change. In winter-spring 2019 I'm grappling with what's called 'echo phonology' in German Sign Language and delving into neurological matters. I'm also finishing up a study of the semantics of predicate-initial sentences in sign languages and totally mired in a study on how handshape and movement relate across sign languages.
I'm on a team that works to protect deaf children's right to language. We publish mostly in medical journals. You can access our articles here. This work has taught me about first language acquisition and honed my advocacy skills. I hope to offer a course on Advocacy and Social Justice soon.
And I am engaged in developing materials to promote shared reading between deaf children and their parents (see below).
Beyond mainstream linguistics, I'm interested in how linguistic theories and methodologies can be applied to analyzing body articulations in yoga and dance. This work is part of SUPERLINGUISTICS: I gave the first presentation in a series on SUPERLINGUISTICS at the University of Oslo in January 2019.
I also analyze linguistic innovations in poetry, story-telling, jokes, and taboo language. I organized a conference on Disrespected Literatures at Swarthmore College in spring 2017; you can see a short (3 minute) video about it here. I'm co-editing an issue of the Italian online journal Altre Modernità devoted to disrespected literatures.
The LSA did a spotlight interview with me in April 2017.
As of fall, 2018, I changed from being Professor of Linguistics to Professor of Linguistics and Social Justice.
Bimodal-bilingual ebooks
My students and I have been collaborating with Prof. Gene Mirus and his students at Gallaudet University since 2013 on producing bimodal-bilingual ebooks, in thirteen sign languages with the print of the ambient spoken language. We hope to add more languages soon, as well as ebooks with child signers from the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf.
https://riseebooks.wixsite.com/access
For a discussion of how and why we do what we do, go here. For a college article about our project, go here.
