Resources
African American English: A Webpage for Linguists
Brain and Language Lab, Georgetown University
Distributed Morphology FAQ
Distributed Morphology Archive
Genetics of Specific Language Impairment (SLI)
Language Log
LingBuzz
The Linguist List
Linguistic Society of America
MIT Linguistics Papers
The Omnivorous Linguist
Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Harvard University
Voices from the Days of Slavery, Audio Interviews

   

Linguists
David Adger
Jonathan David Bobaljik
Noam Chomsky
David Embick
Kleanthes K. Grohmann
Heidi Harley
Marc Hauser
William Labov
Thomas McFadden
Andrew Nevins
Rolf Noyer
Colin Phillips
Stephen Pinker
Laura M. Rupp

Departments
City University of New York
Georgetown University
Harvard University
University of Maryland
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
New York University
University of Pennsylvania
State University of New York, Stony Brook
University of Toronto
University of Washington
University of York

My Handouts and Posters
A poster presentation I am giving at the InterPhases conference organized by Kleanthes Grohmann of the University of Cyprus. (2006) WEIT on Smith Island (Another Vexing Expletive). Castelliotissa Hall, Nicosia, Cyprus. May 18-20, 2006.

The handout for my dissertation defense. (2006) Bridging the Gap: Distributed Morphological Mechanisms of Labovian Variation in Morphosyntax. Doctoral Dissertation Defense. Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University, Washington D.C. May 9th, 2006.     

Revised abstract and handout for a talk at the 30th Penn Linguistics Colloquium, session on Distributed Morphology: (2006) Distributed Morphological mechanisms of Smith Island weren’t leveling. Penn Linguistics Colloquium 30. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. February 24, 2006.

A conference talk at NWAV 34 in NYC, and the basis for Chapter 4 of my dissertation. Dig the Samhain/Danzig font! (2005) Beyond you and I: Distributed Morphological mechanisms of pronoun variation. New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 34. New York University, New York, NY. October 22, 2005.

An invited talk I gave for Come Together NYC at apexart. Sadly, the Inuit culture will die before the myth about Eskimo words for snow. (2005) From the Arctic to the Amazon, Whorf Rides Again (The Whorfian Fallacy Revisited). Come Together NYC. Apex Art, New York, NY. February 12, 2005. This guy with the great sweater was in the audience!

   

A poster presentation I gave at GURT. Dig the excellent Friday-the-13th font! (2004) Variability as an empirical phenomenon and its implications for linguistic theory (a case study). Georgetown University Round Table (GURT) 2004. Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. March 26-29, 2004.

An invited talk I gave in Germany. (2003) Variation, change, and the morphological component. Linguistics Research Group Colloquium, Institute for German Language and Literature. University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany. January 29, 2003.

A conference talk, with Jen Mittelstaedt. (2002) With Jennifer Mittelstaedt. A Distributed Morphology account of were't leveling. New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 31. Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA. October 9 - 13, 2002.

A conference talk. (2001) Dialect death and morpho-syntactic change: Smith Island Weak Expletive it. New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 30. Raleigh, NC. October 11 - 14, 2001.

Our Video
Yes, we have got a video! By Klara Hobza, starring me. 
The Eskimo Myth

Some random scribblings
These are (very) occasional comments I have made about words in English. Some have found them amusing. It is unlikely that they will be updated anytime soon.
Blondenfreude
Porn-napping
Feeling incalcitrant?

My Dissertation [Updated 2/10/2007]

On January 9, 2007, I deposited my dissertation with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Thus, on January 31, 2007, I was awarded the degree of Ph.D. (Philosophiae Doctor, Latin for 'teacher of philosophy,' from Greek philosophia, 'love of knowledge') in the discipline of Linguistics. Below is a .PDF of the complete dissertation. If anyone asks me, I can post the chapters separately. Comments and correspondence are most welcome. Please note that this version supersedes all previous versions, as well as superseding all of my earlier papers from which the dissertation developed. 

Distributed Morphological Mechanisms
of Labovian Variation in Morphosyntax

Abstract:  This dissertation takes a biolinguistic perspective on Labovian variation in morphosyntax, an important phenomenon discovered by sociolinguists (Chambers, Trudgill and Schilling-Estes 2002). The dissertation asks how an account of the mechanisms underlying such variation can be incorporated into a Minimalist theoretical model of the human language faculty (Chomsky 1995, et seq.).

To address this question, three cases of morphosyntactic variation in English are investigated using an adapted combination of variationist and theoretical methods. A primary empirical focus is on the moribund English variety spoken in the community of Smith Island, Maryland, where both phonological and morphosyntactic variants are currently undergoing a process of rapid change as the insular dialect approaches death due to ongoing population attrition (Schilling-Estes and Wolfram 1999). This dissertation considers two morphosyntactic variants on Smith Island: weak expletive it (Parrott 2002) and leveled weren’t (Schilling-Estes 2000, Mittelstaedt 2006). The dissertation also examines the puzzle of pronominal case-form mismatches and pronoun-specific ordering asymmetries that occur in English coordinate noun phrases (Emonds 1986).

This dissertation adopts a particular Minimalist theory of syntax (Chomsky 2000) augmented with the independently motivated and well-articulated theory of Distributed Morphology (DM, Halle and Marantz 1993, Embick and Noyer to appear). In this theoretical model, mechanisms of Labovian variation can be located in the features of syntactic terminals and their combination in the narrow syntax, as proposed by Adger and Smith (Adger and Smith 2005, Adger 2006). Evidence from the three case studies supports the additional hypothesis that mechanisms of variation are located in the morphological component of the language faculty, at the interface between the syntactic computation and the phonological component. Specifically, it is claimed that variation can arise from the inventory and feature structure of non-competing Vocabulary Items and their interactions with ordered operations during the morphological computation to the Phonetic-Form interface.

By showing how actual cases of morphosyntactic variation might receive a plausible analysis within the Minimalist-theoretical framework of DM, an overarching goal of the dissertation is to advocate further cooperative research efforts toward bridging the gap between biolinguistic theory and the empirical study of Labovian variation and change in progress.

Keywords:  dm, distributed morphology, biolinguistics, minimalist, minimalism, sociolinguistics, variation, morphosyntactic theory, syntax, morphology, morphosyntax, pf, interface, morphological component, expletives, agreement, paradigms, leveling, negation, pronouns, case, coordination, vocabulary, fusion, variationist, methodology, apparent time, language change, English, dialects, Smith Island, dialect death 

My Papers and Articles
My PWPL paper from PLC 30. (to appear) Distributed Morphological mechanisms of Smith Island weren't leveling. In University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Proceedings of the 30th Penn Linguistics Colloquium. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics.

My PWPL paper from NWAV 34. (to appear) Distributed Morphological mechanisms of pronoun-case variation. In University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 12.2: Selected Papers from NWAV 34. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics.

An article about Rico the border collie's remarkable ability to understand "words." (2004) Talking to Dogs. Today's Science on File 13: 32-35.

An empirical description of morphosyntactic variation and rapid change in progress on Smith Island, MD. (2002) Dialect death and morpho-syntactic change: Smith Island weak expletive it. In Papers from NWAV 30, eds. D.E. Johnson & T. Sanchez. Philadelphia: U. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics.

         

A proposal for an experiment. (2002) The acquisition of vocabulary in Distributed Morphology. Ms. Georgetown University.

My first attempt at explicating a theory of post-syntactic head movement using Distributed Morphology. (2001) A morphological theory of head movement. Ms. Georgetown University.

A book review. (2001) Review of The Phonology of German by Richard Wiese. The Linguist List     [http://linguistlist.org/issues/12/12-2354.html]

A short paper about agreement variation on Smith Island, MD. (2001) A Preliminary sketch of variation in the verbal agreement system of Smith Island English. Ms. Georgetown University.

My first attempt at a theory of weak-expletive variation. (2000) A partial solution to the theoretical paradox posed by Smith Island weak expletive it. Ms. Georgetown University.