News

  • Gabriela Pérez Báez, who completed a dissertation entitled "Endangerment of a transnational language: the case of San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec" under the direction of Wolf Wölck, Jürgen Bohnemeyer and David Fertig, has been appointed as Research Curator in the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Dr. Pérez Báez will assume her duties in Washington in January, 2010, which include the development of a research program for the preservation and revitalization of endangered languages.

  • Jeff Good has received a $319,725 from the National Science Foundation for field work and documentation of the areal dynamics of seven languages spoken in the Lower Fungom region of Cameroon.

  • Jürgen Bohnemeyer has been appointed an Associate Editor of the journal Language.

  • Matthew Dryer has received a prestigious Humboldt Research Award from Germany's Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which each year honors renowned scientists and scholars from abroad.

  • Matthew Dryer received a $262,229 three year NSF grant for field work and documentation of four languages of Papua New Guinea - Walman (VAN), Poko-Rawo (RWA), Sreenge (LSR), and Yeri (YEV).

  • New Digitization Lab in the Linguistics Department

    The Department of Linguistics recently established a new digitization station with equipment for creating high-quality digital versions of reel-to-reel and cassette recordings. The station includes a reel-to-reel player, a cassette player, an analog-to-digital converter, and an iMac. Using the station's facilities, department members and associates will be able to convert their analog recordings to formats allowing for advanced acoustic analysis via computer and create copies of their recordings suitable for long-term digital archiving. We anticipate that this digitization station will play an important role in future efforts of the department to become more engaged in digital linguistic archiving efforts taking place around the world.