Research

Fieldwork

My work in morphosyntactic theory and formal semantics is grounded in data collected through collaborations with speakers of underdocumented languages. Starting in 2015, I began conducting in situ fieldwork in the town of Sepahua in the Peruvian Amazon with speakers of Amahuaca, an endangered Panoan language. In addition to in situ fieldwork, I also work with diaspora communities in the US on languages like Tswefap, a Narrow Grassfields Bantu language of Cameroon, and Mam, a Mayan language of Guatemala. Through fieldwork I aim not only to document and describe understudied languages, but also to understand how the structure of these languages can inform our models of grammar. In addition to creating materials with linguists in mind, I also work with these communities to create materials that will be of use to speakers and learners of the language.

Switch-reference

A phenomenon that has become of particular interest to me given my work in Amazonia is systems of switch-reference, a morphological strategy for indicating whether arguments in two clauses are coreferential. I am interested in both the internal and external syntax of switch-reference clauses in Amahuaca. The major question my work addresses is what the formal mechanism is that gives rise to the morphological tracking of argument coreference. I am especially interested in the insight this phenomenon can provide about the nature of the operation of Agree and its locality restrictions. In addition, I am working to understand the various meanings that switch-reference clauses can be used to convey and what consequences this has for the semantic interpretation of switch-reference clauses.

Case

I am interested in the mechanism by which case is assigned. My work argues that the operation Agree is at the heart of case assignment, even for cases like ergative, which has been argued to not be the result of Agree. Through the study of Amahuaca's tripartite case system, I have explored the differences between abstract Case and morphological case as well as how both A and A'-movement can affect overt case marking. In research with Amy Rose Deal, we investigate the typology of global case splits and the evidence the person hierarchy effects they display provide for an Agree-based treatment of dependent case. I also have work with Virginia Dawson exploring how case can be realized on discontinuous DPs, using data from Amahuaca and Tiwa (Tibeto-Burman; India).

Locality

A question that interests me is how locality constrains different operations in the grammar. One common theme in my work is demonstrating how processes that appear to be non-local can actually be modeled via a series of more local operations. My work on switch-reference investigates how seemingly long-distance referential dependencies can be reduced to local Agree relations. I am working with Line Mikkelsen and Michelle Yuan to demonstrate how apparent cases of long-distance agreement with obliques in Kalaallisut (Inuit; Greenland) actually involve local agreement with a proleptic object rather than a true cross-clausal Agree dependency. I am also interested in role of locality at the syntax-phonology interface and have ongoing work with Hannah Sande and Maksymilian Dąbkowski examining discontinuous vowel harmony in Guébie (Kru; Côte d'Ivoire), which we argue can be captured via local harmony processes through interleaving of harmony and syntactic movement in cyclic spell out.