In recent years faculty members have conducted field work on languages as diverse as Tlingit, Navajo, Oto-Manguean languages, Bodic languages, Bantu languages, Dholuo, Somali, Batsbi, and Samoan. Graduate students have worked on an even wider array of languages, and still others have been studied in field methods courses. In this department, field work has been used as a tool for research in phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, psycholinguistics, documentation, historical linguistics, and language variation. In addition, faculty as well as graduate students have been active in a variety of community-centered projects, including workshops for speakers of endangered languages and teachers of speakers of varieties of English, dictionaries, grammars and pedagogical materials.
Faculty
| Faruk Akkus fakkus@umass.edu |  | Research interests: Interfaces of syntax with morphology and semantics, Varieties of Arabic, Turkish and Kurdish varieties |
| Michael Becker michael@linguist.umass.edu |  | Research interests: Phonology, computational and experimental morphophonology, fieldwork, Semitic |
| Seth Cable scable@linguist.umass.edu |  | Research interests: Fieldwork, Semantics, Syntax, Na-Dene Languages |
| Lisa Green lgreen@linguist.umass.edu |  | Research interests: Syntax/Semantics with focus on African American English, syntactic variation, L1 Acquisition |
| Alice Harris (Emerita) acharris@linguist.umass.edu |  | Research interests: Historical Linguistics, Morphology, Languages of the Caucasus |
| John Kingston jkingston@linguist.umass.edu |  | Research interests: Phonetics, Phonology, Psycholinguistics |
| Peggy Speas (Emerita) pspeas@linguist.umass.edu |  | Research interests: Syntax, Morphology, Na-Dene Languages |
| Kristine Yu krisyu@linguist.umass.edu |  | Research interests: Prosody from the Speech Signal on Up, Phonetics, Phonology |
Graduate students
| Özge Bakay obakay@umass.edu |  | Research interests: Sentence Processing, Prosody, Turkish and Laz | Year started: 2021 |
| Peyton Deal pdeal.umass.edu |  | Research interests: Phonology, Morphophonology, and Polynesian and North American languages | Year started: 2021 |
| Alessa Farinella afarinella@umass.edu |  | Research interests: Prosody, language documentation, Indonesian & Javanese Prosody, language documentation, Indonesian & Javanese | Year started: 2020 |
| Kaden Holladay kholladay@umass.edu |  | Research interests: Morpho-phonology, syntax-semantics interface, Yup’ik, Finnish | Year started: 2017 |
| Shay Hucklebridge shucklebridg@umass.edu |  | Research interests: Semantics, Linguistic Fieldwork, and Language Revitalization/Documentation | Year started: 2017 |
| Kimberly Johnson kcjohnson@linguist.umass.edu |  | Research interests: Syntax, semantics, fieldwork | Year started: 2016 |
| Seoyoung Kim seoyoungkimk@umass.edu |  | Research interests: Computational phonology, Fieldwork | Year started: 2019 |
| Zahra Mirrazi zmirrazirena@umass.edu | 🙂 | Research interests: Syntax, semantics | Year started: 2016 |
| Ayana Whitmal awhitmal@umass.edu |  | Research interests: AAE, tense and aspect, contact relative clauses, Karuk agreement | Year started: 2019 |
Recent dissertations on endangered / understudied languages
Christopher Hammerly. 2020. Person-based Prominence in Ojibwe
Leland Kusmer. 2019. Optimal Linearization: Prosodic displacement in Khoekhoegowab and Beyond.
Elizabeth Bogal-Allbritten. 2016. Building Meaning in Navajo.
Suzi Lima, 2015. The Grammar of Individuation and Counting.
Andrew Robert McKenzie, 2012. The Role of Contextual Restriction in Reference-Tracking.
Amy Rose Deal, 2010. Topics In The Nez Perce Verb.
Other recent dissertations involving fieldwork
Noah Constant, 2014. Contrastive Topic: Meanings and Realizations
Emily Elfner. 2012. Syntax-Prosody Interactions in Irish.
Christopher M. Davis, 2011. Constraining Interpretation: Sentence Final Particles in Japanese.