Research Area
Field Linguistics | Salish | Syntax | Syntax-Morphology Interface | Syntax-Phonology Interface | Syntax-Semantics Interface | Tsimshianic | Wakashan
My background is in language acquisition, but for the past twenty years my research has focused on the critically endangered indigenous languages of BC, in particular, those of the Salish, Wakashan, and Tsimshianic families.
I have been working since 1992 on the Northern Interior Salish language St’át’imcets (Lilllooet), in partnership with the Upper St’át’imcets Language, Culture and Education Society and collaboration with my colleague Lisa Matthewson. Besides syntactic research on categories, configurationality, anaphora, ellipsis, and WH-questions, and semantic work on modality and quantification, I have written a large but as yet-unpublished teaching grammar of the language, am collaborating on a three-volume English-St’át’imcets dictionary, and have worked on both contemporary and historical textual materials.