Linguistics

Since I began my studies in 2008, linguistics has become very central to me. My particular interests right now are the architecture of grammar, the structured connection between form and meaning, functional morphology (especially in regards to verbal agreement, pronominal reference, and case) and cross-linguistic variation. Once I wrote a post about why I like something as boring as grammar. From April to December 2009 I was a research assistant in the “Hierarchy Effects in Kiranti and Broader Algic” research project. My work there was on the Algic languages (see Wikipedia) of indigenous North America and languages related by geographic nearness and similarity, particularly Karuk (Wikipedia). Some of my work on Karuk can be found on the Hierarchy Effects project wiki, and some is on this page.

Please feel free to read the slides and papers below and send me any critique or comments to michael -at- sappir-dot-net.

My blog posts related to linguistics — also not many so far – can be found under the Language category.

Papers/Talks

• Paper: “Hierarchies and portmanteaux of Karuk pronominal affixes with Distributed Morphology and without hierarchies or portmanteaux”. (PDF) In Linguistische Arbeitsberichte (LAB) no. 88, December 2010.
  • (July ’10) Talk at presentation of papers for LAB no. 88.  Slides (pdf)
  • (May ’10) Talk at students’ conference StuTS XLVII, in Mainz. Abstract on StuTS site / Slides (pdf)