I am a Professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at Pomona College.
My research interests include syntactic and morphological theory, and the syntax and morphosyntax of languages of East Africa. My main areas of interest are in the domains of agreement and noun phrase licensing, though I am involved with multiple long-term documentation projects as well. Much of my recent work has morphed into investigations of the interface between information structure and syntax, both in Bantu languages and in Nilo-Saharan (Kipsigis).
A career goal of mine is to contribute to the training and professional development of African linguists: in my mind, the best way to achieve robust and accurate documentation of African languages is to empower African linguists. And it seems a moral imperative as well to use the resources available at Western universities to empower our colleagues in other places. I try to do this through research collaborations/partnerships, finding/providing professional opportunities for others when I can, and through editorial support like developing resources for publishing and helping develop a proceedings publication for the newly revived Language Association of East Africa. If you are an African linguist working on your own (or other local) languages, please feel free to contact me if there is some way that I can contribute to your professional development.
I am also involved with a project connected to language acquisition; we are investigating ways in which derivational (Minimalist) analyses of sentence structure are correlated with timelines of child language acquisition: Developmental Minimalist Syntax (DMS). This approach takes the findings Minimalist generative enterprise mostly on face value, while also largely abandoning traditional notions of UG (as has been typical of Minimalist syntacticians for a while now, though it’s not clear that the word is out about that).
I teach courses on syntax, morphology, and field methods, in addition to introductory-level courses on language and linguistics.
A selection of papers and handouts are available for download, including explanations of my current work that isn’t yet published.
With collaborators, I have developed and aggregated some resources that are useful for learning LaTeX that are specifically aimed at the undergraduate linguistics student, and LaTeX beginners more generally. There are also links there to adaptations of those materials to assist with the proceedings of the publications of the Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL).