Students

Dissertations directed

Robert Lewis  (Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Linguistics Program, University of Winnipeg) Potawatomi discourse markers (2020)

Cherry Meyer (LSA Collegiate Fellow in American Culture, University of Michigan) Noun categorization in Ojibwe: Gender and classifiers (2020)

Rachel Lehr (Research Fellow, Norwegian Philological Institute) A grammar of Pashai (2014)

Eduardo Rivail Ribeiro  A grammar of Karajá (2012)

Thomas Wier  (Assistant Professor at Free University of Tbilisi)
 Georgian morphosyntax and feature hierarchies in natural language (2011)

Ana Vilacy Galucio (Senior researcher and Coordinator of the Human Sciences Department at the Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi in Brazil) The morphosyntax of Mekens (TUPI) (2001)

Lynette Melnar Caddo verb morphology (1998)

Etsuyo Yuasa (Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures; Director, Center for East Asian Studies, Ohio State University)
 Subordinate Clauses in Japanese (1998)

David Kathman The Morphosyntax of Complex Verb Agreement (1994)

Dissertation committees

in progress:

Tran Truong Heterogeneity in morphological contiguity (Karlos Arregi, chair)

completed:

Janet Connor Making welfare “sustainable”: The language, politics, and ethics of scale-making in a Norwegian neighborhood. Joint PhD with Anthropology] (2021, Susan Gal, chair)

Juan José Bueno Holle Information structure in Isthmus Zapotec (2016, Lenore Grenoble, chair)

Eleni Staraki  Greek modality (2013, Anastasia Giannakidou, chair)

Petia Alexieva (Instructor, Defense Language Institute, San Antonio) Second language acquisition of reflexive verbs in Russian by L1 speakers of English [Slavic Languages and Literatures] (2013, Lenore Grenoble, chair)

Erik Houle (Senior Lecturer, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago) Preposed possessive constructions in Russian and Polish [Slavic Languages and Literatures] (2013, Lenore Grenoble, chair)

Donald Metlay  [take] and the ASL verb complex: An Autolexical account (2012, John Goldsmith, chair)

James Slotta (Assistant Professor, Anthropology, University of Texas)
 On the receiving end: Cultural frames for communicative acts in post-colonial Papua New Guinea [Joint PhD with Anthropology] (2012, Michael Silverstein, chair)

Courtney Handman (Associate Professor, Anthropology, University of Texas) Schism and Christianity: Bible translation and the social organization of denominationalism in the Waria Valley, Papua New Guinea [Anthropology] (2011, Michael Silverstein, chair)

Benjamin Smith (Associate Professor, Human Development, Sonoma State University) Language and the formation of masculinity in Peruvian Aymara boyhood [Joint PhD with Human Development] (2011, John Lucy, chair)

Özlem Ece Demir (Assistant Professor, Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa) Development of narrative structure in children’s speech and gesture [Psychology] (2010, Susan Goldin-Meadow, chair)

Alejandro Paz (Associate Professor, Anthropology, University of Toronto, Scarborough) Discursive transformation: The emergence of ethnolinguistic identity among Latin American migrants and their children in Israel [Joint PhD with Anthropology] (2010, Michael Silverstein, chair)

Erin Debenport (Associate Professor, Anthropology, UCLA)
 “Listen so you can live life the way it’s supposed to be lived”: Paradoxes of text, secrecy and language at a New Mexico Pueblo’ (2009, Michael Silverstein, chair)

John Boyle (Associate Professor, Linguistics, CSU Fresno)
 Hidatsa Morpho-Syntax and Clause Structure (2008, Jason Merchant, chair)

Ichiro Yuhara (Associate Professor of English at Tokyo Metropolitan University)
 A Multimodular Approach to Case Assignment in Japanese: a Study of Complex Predicates and Stative Predicates (2008, Jerrold Sadock, chair)

Clare Cook The syntax and semantics of clause-typing in Plains Cree (2008, external examiner, University of British Columbia, Rose-Marie Déchaine, chair)

Christopher Ball (Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame)
 Out of the Park: Trajectories of Wauja (Xingu Arawak) Language and Culture [Joint PhD with Anthropology] (2007, Michael Silverstein, chair)

Mary Catherine Gruber
 A linguistic and ethnographic analysis of apology narratives performed in the context of federal sentencing hearings (2007, Michael Silverstein, chair)

Amy Franklin (Associate Professor, School of Biomedical Informatics, the University of Texas, Health Science Center at Houston)
 Liar Liar Hands on Fire: What Gesture-Speech Asynchrony Reveals About Thinking [Joint PhD with Psychology] (2007, David McNeill, chair)

Mika Ishino (Lecturer, Kansai Gaidai University, Kobe University and University of Hyogo) Metaphor and Metonymy in Gesture and Discourse (2007, David McNeill, chair)

Wing Chee (Catherine) So (Associate Professor, Department of Educational Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Kong) Speaking and moving hands to describe motion events: Cross-linguistic differences in speech and gestural representation of arguments in adults and children [Psychology] (2007, Susan Goldin-Meadow, chair)

Irene Kimbara (Lecturer at Kushiro University in Hokkaido, Japan) A Study on Interpersonal Gesture Coordination in Interaction [Joint PhD with Psychology] (2006, David McNeill, chair)

Fey Parrill (Associate Professor of Cognitive Science at Case Western University)
 Subjects in the hands of speakers: An experimental study of the relationship between syntactic subject and speech-gesture patterning in narrative discourse. [Joint PhD with Psychology] (2006, David McNeill, chair)

Karl-Erik McCullough Using Gestures in Speaking: Self-generating Indexical Fields (2005, David McNeill, chair)

Saeko Noda (formerly Reynolds) (Associate Professor, Tokyo Women’s Medical University)
 A Multimodular Analysis of Japanese Quantifiers (2005, Jerrold Sadock, chair)

Daniel Suslak (Associate Professor in Anthropology at Indiana University)
 The Future of Totontepecano Mixe: Youth and Language in the Mixe Highlands (Oaxaca, Mexico) (2005, Michael Silverstein, chair)

Arika Okrent From Meaning to words: an investigation of past tense verb inflection in English comparing a form to form mapping task with a meaning to form mapping task (2004, David McNeill, chair [?])

Christopher (Rodolfo) Celis Linguistic Measurement of Proximity of Harm (2003)

Sylvain Neuvel Metamorphology: A word based account of polysynthesis and other multivalent morphological relations (2003, Jerrold Sadock, chair)

Woodford Beach (Senior Speech Pathologist, Virginia Commonwealth University)
 Dyspragmia in Wernicke’s Aphasia and Alzheimer’s Disease: An Investigation in Clinical Pragmatics (2002)

Randall Eggert (Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Utah)
 Disconcordance: The syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of or-agreement (2002)

Yoko Mizuta (Senior Associate Professor, International Christian University)
 A Discourse-Semantic Analysis of Tense and Aspect in English and Japanese (2002, Anastasia Giannakidou, chair)

Gail Brendel Viechnicki  Evidentiality in Scientific Discourse (2002)

Audra Dainora An Empirically Based Probabilistic Model of Intonation in American English (2001)

H. Paul Manning (Professor of Anthropology at Trent University) Typology, History and ‘Teratology’: The rise and fall of the ‘abnormal main clause with relative structure in P-Celtic (2001, Michael Silverstein, chair)

Nobuhiro Furuyama  (Professor, School of Human Sciences, Waseda University, Japan) De-syntacticizing the theories of reference maintenance from the viewpoint of poetic function of language and gesture : a case of Japanese discourse. (2001, Psychology, David McNeill, chair)

Fu-Wen Lin (Assistant Professor at Institute of Applied English at the National Taiwan Ocean University)
 The Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics of Dou and Ye in Mandarin Chinese (2000)

Asli Özyürek (Professor, Department of Language and Communication, Radboud University Nijmegen) The effect of context on spatial representations in speech and gesture : a comparative study of adults and children [Joint PhD with Psychology] (2000, David McNeill, chair)

Robert Moore (Senior Lecturer, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania) “The people are here now.” : the contemporary culture of an ancestral language : studies in obsolescent Kiksht (Wasco-Wishram dialect of Upper Chinookan) – Vol. 1 & 2  [Joint PhD with Anthropology] (2000, Michael Silverstein, chair)

Anne David (Assistant research scientist at the Center for Advanced Study of Language at the University of Maryland)
 Comparative Study of Dravidian Infinitives (1999)

Elaine Francis (Associate professor in the Department of English and the graduate program in Linguistics at Purdue University) Variation within Lexical Categories (1999, Salikoko Mufwene, chair)

Syugo Hotta (Professor of Language and Law, Meiji University School of Law)
 Multi-Dimensional Word Formation in Japanese (1999)

Kora Singer Agreement: Cross-Linguistic Variation & Acquisition – Vol. 1 & 2 (1999)

Eddy Gaytan (Associate Professor of Spanish, Chicago State University)
 The Study of Path: The Semantics of English and Spanish Dynamic Prepositions and Motion and Manner Verbs – Vol. 1, 2,3 (1998)

Olga Beloded 
 The Syntactic and Discourse-Functional Properties of WH-Questions in Russian (1996)

Katharine P. Beals (Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education) A Linguistic Analysis of Verbal Irony – Vol. 1 & 2 (1995)

Stuart Creason (Associate Instructional Professor in Aramaic, University of Chicago) Semantic Classes of Hebrew Verbs: A Study of Aktionsart in the Hebrew Verbal System (1995)

Kyunghwan Kim (Professor, Department of English Language & Literature, Kyonggi University, Korea)
 The Syntax and Semantics of Causative Constructions in Korean – Vol. 1 & 2 (1994)

Yoshio Ueno (Professor at Center for English Language Education in Science and Engineering, Waseda University)
 Grammatical Functions and Clause Structure in Japanese – Vol. 1 & 2 (1994)

Tista Bagchi (Professor of Linguistics, University of Delhi)
 Clausal Subordination in Bangla: A Cross-Modular Approach (1994)

Sotaro Kita (Professor of Psychology, University of Warwick)
 Language and Thought Interface: A Study of Spontaneous Gestures and Japanese Mimetics [Joint PhD with Psychology](1994, David McNeill, chair)

Cynthia Lynn Miller (Naudé) (Senior Professor, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa)
 Reported Speech in Biblical and Epigraphic Hebrew: A Linguistic Analysis (1992)

Anna Bosch (Associate Professor of English and Linguistics, University of Kentucky)
 Phonotactics at the Level of the Phonological Word (1991)

Justine Cassell (Professor, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University)
 The Development of the Expression of Time and Event in Narrative [Joint PhD with Psychology] (1991, David McNeill, chair)

Randolph J. Graczyk (Pastor at St. Charles Parish, Pryor, Billings, Montana) Incorporation and Cliticization in Crow Morphosyntax (1991)

Paul Kroeber (Research associate, Indiana University)
 Comparative Syntax of Subordination in Salish (1991)

Jeffry Alan Leer (Professor emeritus, University of Alaska at Fairbanks)
 The Schetic Categories of the Tlingit Verb (1991)

Asif Agha
 (Professor of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania)
 Lexical Structure and Grammatical Categories in Lhasa Tibetan (1990)

MA theses advised

Adam Cooper Towards an account of the distribution and behavior of the Meskwaki emphatic enclitic meko. (2021)

Raleigh Barrett Language ideology and student subjectivity in text artifacts at Diné College [Masters of Arts Program in the Social Sciences] (2016)

Alison Wiener How “local” is local? Does common ground presuppose common meaning? (2008)

Jeni Elliot Logophoricity in Zarma (2007)

Zuzana Tomkova Linguistic ideologies and their significance in linguistics (2006)

Özlem Ece Demir What is hidden in the hands? A cross-linguistic investigation of children’s argument representation in speech and gesture [Psychology] (2006)

Laurel Anne Hasler Obviation in two Innu-aimun atanukana, Memorial University, (2002, external examiner; Marguerite MacKenzie, chair)

Erin Debenport Form and content in substance abuse narratives [Masters of Arts Program in the Social Sciences] (1999)

BA theses advised

Anna Whitney Linguistic landscapes: Ojibwe signage in Northern Minnesota.

       Anjali Murthy Discourse of deafness: A critical analysis (2019)

Corinne Kasper Three Fires Verbal Morphology and Grammatical Description [external examiner; Dartmouth College] (2017)

Wesley Jones Characterization of syntactic subject for certain Georgian verbs (2015)

Christine Boylan Causal inference processing in narratives: A fMRI study and review of methodology (2008)