Linguistics
Linguistics, the scientific study of human language and languages, is both a discipline in itself and an interdisciplinary hub with strong ties to various other fields. The discipline studies the structure, use, and history of language: structure is divided into phonetics (speech production and perception), phonology (sound systems), morphology (word structure), syntax (sentence structure), semantics (meaning in linguistic structure), pragmatics (meaning in context), and discourse (the structure of texts). Language use in the broadest sense encompasses sociolinguistics (language in society); psycholinguistics/neurolinguistics (the psychology and neurological basis of language); and language acquisition by children (first-language acquisition) and adults (second-language acquisition). The primary focus of historical linguistics is language change. The field's strongest interdisciplinary ties are to anthropology (anthropological linguistics and linguistic anthropology), psychology (the psychology of language), philosophy (the philosophy of language, linked especially to the study of semantics and pragmatics), computer science (computational linguistics), sociology (the sociology of language), evolutionary biology (the origins of human language), and acoustics (linked especially to phonetics).
Editor in Chief
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After receiving her Ph.D. in 1968, Sally Thomason taught Slavic linguistics at Yale (1968-1971) and then general linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh (1972-1998). Since 1999 she has been at the University of Michigan, where she is now the William J. Gedney Collegiate Professor of Linguistics and Chair of the Linguistics Department. Thomason has worked with the Salish & Pend d'Oreille Culture Committee in St. Ignatius, Montana, since 1981, compiling a dictionary and other materials for the tribes' Salish-Pend d'Oreille language program. |
OUP: Where is your current research focused?
Thomason: My current research focuses on contact-induced language change and Salishan linguistics, but I also have a continuing interest in debunking linguistic pseudoscience. A few of my publications are `Chinook Jargon in areal and historical context' (Language, 1983), `Genetic relationship and the case of Ma'a (Mbugu)' (Studies in African Linguistics, 1983), `Before the Lingua Franca: Pidgin Arabic in the eleventh century A.D.' (with Alaa Elgibali, Lingua , 1986), Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics (with Terrence Kaufman, 1988, 1991), Language contact: an introduction (2001), `On the unpredictability of contact effects' (2000), `Linguistic areas and language history' (2000), `Truncation in Montana Salish' (with Lucy Thomason, 2004), `Language contact and deliberate change' (Journal of Language Contact, 2007), and `At a loss for words' (Natural History magazine, December 2007/January 2008). I was editor of Language (1988-1994), and I'm currently on the editorial boards of Studies in pidgin and creole languages, Bilingualism: language and cognition, and the Journal of Historical Linguistics.
OUP: What committees have you served on?
Thomason: I've served on various Linguistic Society of America committees (as a member of the Executive Committee 2001-2003) and taught at three LSA summer Linguistic Institutes (as the Collitz Professor in 1999); I was President of the LSA in 2009. I was Chair of the Linguistics & Language Sciences section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1996 and the section Secretary in 2001-2005; since 2010 I've been a Fellow of the AAAS. I was President of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas in 2000. I'm currently on the international Advisory Board of the Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics (LOT) and was formerly on the advisory board of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (2001-2007). Among my less academic activities are blogging on Language Log (languagelog.org,) expert witnessing in various court cases, and doodling (I'm a member of Alpine Artisans in Condon & Seeley Lake, Montana).
Editorial Board
| Senior Editors | ||
| Rusty Barrett University of Kentucky Jennifer Cole University of Illinois |
Marianne Mithun University of California, Santa Barbara |
Ian Roberts Cambridge University |
Volume Editors
| Keith Allan Monash University Matthew Baerman University of Surrey Robert Bayley University of California, Davis Robert I. Binnick University of Toronto Jennifer Collins Bloomquist Gettysburg College Cedric Boeckx Catalan Institute for Advanced Studies Richard Cameron University of Illinois at Chicago Guglielmo Cinque University of Venice Abigail C. Cohn Cornell University Paola Crisma University of Trieste Hubert Cuyckens University of Leuven Jacques Durand Universite de Toulouse - Le Mirail Philip Durkin Oxford University Press Caroline Féry University of Frankfurt Markku Filppula University of Eastern Finland Cécile Fougeron CNRS/University of Paris 3 Andrew Garrett UC Berkeley Dirk Geeraerts University of Leuven Kathleen R. Gibson University of Texas Houston Lisa Green University of Massachusetts Amherst Ulrike Gut Westfalische Wilhelms-Universitat Munster Bernd Heine University of Cologne Wolfram Hinzen Durham University Thomas Hoffmann University of Osnabrück |
Patrick Honeybone University of Edinburgh Carole Hough University of Glasgow Yan Huang University of Auckland Marie K. Huffman SUNY Stony Brook Shinichiro Ishihara MIT Robert B. Kaplan University of Southern California Richard S. Kayne New York University Juhani Klemola University of Tampere Gjert Kristoffersen Universitetet i Bergen Sonja Lanehart University of Texas at San Antonio Jeffrey Lidz University of Maryland Rochelle Lieber University of New Hampshire Giuseppe (Pino) Longobardi University of Trieste Ceil Lucas Gallaudet University Edouard Machery University of Pittsburgh Andrej Malchukov Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Kirsten Malmkjær University of Leicester Ruslan Mitkov University of Wolverhampton Shigeru Miyagawa MIT Heiko Narrog Darwin College Heiko Narrog Tohoku University Terttu Nevalainen University of Helsinki Jan Nuyts University of Antwerp Jonathan Owens University of Bayreuth |
Joe Pater University of Massachusetts Gillian Ramchand University of Tromso Charles Reiss Concordia University Ian Roberts University of Cambridge Joseph Salmons University of Wisconsin-Madison Devyani Sharma Queen Mary University of London William Snyder University of Connecticut Lawrence M. Solan Brooklyn Law School Jae Jung Song University of Otago Andrew Spencer University of Essex Pavol Štekauer Šafárik University, Košice Chaofen Sun Stanford University Maggie Tallerman Newcastle University John R. Taylor University of Otago Nicholas Thieberger University of Melbourne Peter Tiersma Loyola Los Angeles Elizabeth Closs Traugott Stanford University Graeme Trousdale University of Edinburgh Johan Van Der Auwera University of Antwerp Rainer Vossen Goethe Universitat William S-Y Wang The Chinese University of Hong Kong Michael Weiss Cornell University Markus Werning Ruhr University of Bochum Kevin Windle Australian National University |
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