Hello folks! I'm Mike Clauss, First year PhD student in Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. My linguistic interests are in synxtax, and acquisition, and the study and preservation of minority and understudied languages. My interests within syntax are on the nature and locus of case and phi features, and on the syntactic form of mood and aspect. Particularly, I am interested in phenomena where mood and aspect (and other temporal information) are expressed by nominal morphology, whether this be aspectually-split ergativity (as is common in many languages) or the putative nominal tense of languages like Sirionó. These sorts of phenomena present an interesting riddle for syntacticians. Within acquisition, I am interested in the acquisition of morphology, especially of gender agreement systems and modality, particularly in Dravidian languages and other languages of South Asia. Generally, I believe that any good theory of language must pay close attention to both typological variation and data from acquisition. No theory can be successful if it ignores the data - any of the data. This is the outlook through which I try to view my linguistic research. The issue of language documentation and convervation is a crucial one for the modern linguist. Languages all over the world are vanishing rapidly. This is often due to generally positive forces such as the increasing importance of communication over longer distances (at regional, national, and global levels), though is also potentially influenced by more negative forces such as climate change (especially in regions like the Pacific). It is incumbent upon linguists to take an interest in the state of these languages, and to support, where possible and appropriate, movements by speakers to revitalize or even revive languages. Below you may find my curriculum vitae. Academic History 2011 - Present PhD program in Linguistics, University of Massachusetts Amherst 2009 - 2011 MA program in Linguistics, University of Hawai'i at Manoa 2007 BA in Sociology, Western Washington University 2005 AA, Shoreline Community College Conference Presentations 09/14/2010 Lomnak Majol (with Laura Berbusse). FEL XIV: Reversing Language Shift, Carmarthen, Wales Teaching Experience Fall 2010 - Spring 2011 Linguistics 102: Introduction to the Study of Language (Instructor) at University of Hawai'i at Manoa Winter 2007 Sociology 215: Social Statistics (Teaching Assistant) at Western Washington University Email me: mclauss+@+hawaii.edu Back to home