Teaching
I regularly teach core courses in the Language Documentation & Conservation stream at University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. I have also taught seminars in Austronesian linguistics.
Current courses
Austronesian languages (LING 770)
The Austronesian languages comprise over 1,200 languages that stretch from Madagascar in the west to Rapa Nui in the east, making it the most expansive language family in the world. This seminar surveys the history, structure, and diversity of Austronesian languages from both phylogenetic and typological perspectives. We will cover topics such as Austronesian (pre-)history, including the Austronesian homeland and the Austronesian expansion, language contact with both Austronesian and non-Austronesian languages, among others. We will also survey key structural properties of Austronesian languages, such as phonotactics, prosody, lexical categories, grammatical relations and symmetrical voice systems. Students will gain a broader understanding of Austronesian languages with opportunities to investigate current topics in the field of Austronesian linguistics.
Field Methods (LING 690)1
Semesters taught: Fall 2025 Fall 2025 Fall 2024 Spring 2024 Fall 2023 Fall 2022 Fall 2021
This course is primarily designed to equip graduate students to carry out linguistic fieldwork on un(der)documented languages. It is the first part of a two semester course in which students acquire training in the skills and tools of linguistic fieldwork and language documentation by working with a speaker of a language previously unknown to them to produce a documentation and description of aspects of the language. We will take (or maybe more accurately simulate) a holistic and ethnographic approach and simultaneously create and annotate a corpus of language in use, build a lexical database, and produce a grammatical sketch. Students will learn techniques of data collection, elicitation, management, and analysis by doing linguistic fieldwork.
Selected previous courses
Advanced Field Methods (LING 691)2
Semesters taught: Spring 2026 Spring 2025 Spring 2024 Spring 2023 Spring 2022
This course is primarily designed to equip graduate students to carry out linguistic fieldwork on un(der)documented languages. It is the first part of a two semester course in which students acquire training in the skills and tools of linguistic fieldwork and language documentation by working with a speaker of a language previously unknown to them to produce a documentation and description of aspects of the language. We will take (or maybe more accurately simulate) a holistic and ethnographic approach and simultaneously create and annotate a corpus of language in use, build a lexical database, and produce a grammatical sketch. Students will learn techniques of data collection, elicitation, management, and analysis by doing linguistic fieldwork.
Techniques in Language Documentation (LING 710)
Semesters taught: Spring 2024 Spring 2023 Spring 2022 Spring 2021
Contemporary language documentation is dedicated to collecting, annotating, curating, and disseminating long-lasting, multipurpose records of the linguistic practices of a language communities. This course will give you the skills you need to produce such a documentation, with special attention given to digital data collection, data sustainability, and the documentation of language-in-use. The skills you develop in this class can be extended to future fieldwork, community-based language work, and/or toward bringing an existing documentation project in line with current practice. Students will (1) gain an understanding of the current practices in digital language documentation; (2) develop skills in a prosody-based transcription system that can be applied to any spoken language; (3) become familiar with key software and hardware used in the field; (4) develop skills to troubleshoot data management problems in a variety of fieldwork situations. By the end of the course, students will be able to plan for conducting best-practice language documentation project of their own, from equipment purchase to recording language-in-use to data annotation to archiving and dissemination.
Usage-based linguistics: Theory and practice (LING 750G)
Co-taught with Shelece Easterday
Semesters taught: Fall 2025
This graduate seminar explores the foundational principles of usage-based linguistics, which views language as a dynamic network of interrelated constructions shaped by domain-general cognitive processes. Students will examine how linguistic structure emerges from patterns of language use. The course covers key theoretical frameworks including construction grammar and exemplar theory, and investigates the roles of language user experience, communicative needs, and cognitive processes in language development and change.
Special emphasis will be placed on applying usage-based approaches to empirical language data, with a particular focus on non-dominant and under-resourced languages. Students will learn to analyze authentic language data through usage-based methodologies, addressing how these approaches can reveal insights into linguistic patterns that might be overlooked in more traditional frameworks. By the end of the course, students will understand the theoretical underpinnings of usage-based linguistics and gain practical experience in applying these theories with the aim of developing original research projects with existing language data including corpora, both published and collected in the field.
Grammar writing (LING 750G)
Semesters taught: Spring 2023
The descriptive grammar is a pillar of documentary linguistics, an essential part of the “Boasian trilogy,” and yet its position within the field is uncertain. Important questions remain: what is the utility of a reference grammar and how does it relate to the documentation and to language maintenance/revitalization/reclamation efforts? Who is the audience, and what aspects of language structure must be recorded? Can we ever hope to capture speakers’ knowledge of their language within a single volume? What is the role of linguistic theory?
In this course we critically evaluate these aspects and others of highly regarded descriptive grammars. We also examine new approaches to grammar writing that aim to link to text corpora and media files. The goal is to deconstruct the conventions of grammar writing in order to improve documentary practice.
We also begin to practice linguistic description by discussing topics commonly addressed in grammars.
Selected workshops
Metadata, Data Management, and Archiving in Language Documentation