Below are brief descriptions of the research groups I lead as well as long term projects I am involved in both at Penn State and those housed at other institutions.
Morphology Circle
This group is comprised of scholars here at Penn State (both students & faculty) and elsewhere who have an interest in collaborating on theoretical and experimental approaches to linguistic structure. The Circle is also home to regularly (bi-monthly) presentations during the academic year. Research group homepage: click here Pennsylvania Dutch Language Initiative
Pennsylvania Dutch (also referred to Pennsylvania German) presents a fascinating case study of the resilience of a minority language over the course of more than three centuries in contact with English. Although the grammar (here encompassing the lexicon, phonology, morphology, and syntax) of Penn Dutch has retained a great deal of German-like properties, it also possesses many typologically divergent and interesting forms, with some of them unattested in any other continental or global variety of German. One of the principle goals of this long-standing project is to document and provide a detailed overview of the variation of different forms of Penn Dutch across space and time. Research group homepage: coming soon! |
Norwegian Across the Americas
This four-year project (2020-2024), lead by PI Prof. Kari Kinn (University of Bergen), focuses on heritage Norwegian spoken in Latin America. This project brings together field, formal, and sociolinguists to gain a deeper understanding of how these varieties of heritage Norwegian have been affected over the last century at the community- and individual level. The new data collected in connection with this research will also be transcribed and added to the Corpus of American Nordic Speech (CANS). Project homepage: here Language Attrition & Ultimate Attainment
This project, headed by PI Prof. Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes (University of the Balearic Islands, Spain) has recently been approved for funding by the Spanish Ministry and Science and Innovation. The projects brings together international scholars who combine experimental techniques with formal grammar. Project homepage: coming soon! |