Linguistics Field Research

UCSD Department of Linguistics has a long tradition of fieldwork on different languages. Previously, Prof. Margaret Langdon, Prof. Ron Langacker and their students conducted fieldwork on Native American languages, including local languages of the San Diego area (Kumeyaay and Luiseno).

Gabriela Caballero continues the Native American area focus in the department with extensive research on Raramuri and other Uto-Aztecan languages.
Farrell Ackerman is conducting research on Moro and Tundra Nenets. Previous languages studied include Estonian and Hungarian.
Sharon Rose is currently focusing on Moro, but has researched Semitic languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea, including Chaha, Muher, Ezha, Endegen, Harari, Tigre and Tigrinya.

Other projects in the department are underway on GiTonga (Bantu language of Mozambique), Mixtec (Oto-Manguean language of Mexico), and Spanish of the Tijuana/San Diego border area. Graduate students take a Field Methods class as part of training in empirical methods. Undergraduate students can participate in research through courses such as Languages of Africa or independent study.

The Linguistics Field Research Lab is located in AP&M 2452. The Lab is used for elicitation sessions with language consultants, project meetings and individual research.

Current Research

Current language projects in the department include:

  • Moro Language Project - funded by the National Science Foundation
  • Choguita Raramuri (Tarahumara) Documentation Project - funded by the Endangered Language Documentation Programme
  • Border Spanish Project - funded by the UCSD Academic Senate
  • Mixtec Language Project - funded by UCSD Latino Studies Research Initiative
  • Ejective Fricatives in Tigrinya - funded by the UCSD Academic Senate

    • News

    Congratulations

    Undergraduate honors student Carlos Cisneros (BA 2010) received a UCSD Undergraduate Research Scholarship to conduct field research on Mixtec in Oaxaca, Mexico and with a local Mixtec immigrant community. The results of his research can be found in "Free relative clauses in two Mixtec languages" with co-authors Ivano Caponigro and Harold Torrance, to be published in the International Journal of American Linguistics.

    Undergraduate honors student Andrew Strabone (BA 2010) completed an honors thesis on Moro causatives; a shorter version will appear in Selected Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference on African Linguistics with co-author Sharon Rose.

    Publications

    Caballero, Gabriela. 2011. Morphologically conditioned stress assignment in Choguita Rarámuri Linguistics 49, 749-790.

    Caballero, Gabriela. 2011. Behind the Mexican Mountains: Recent Developments and New Directions in Research on Uto-Aztecan Languages. Language and Linguistics Compass 5, 485-584.

    Caballero, Gabriela. 2010. Scope, phonology and morphology in an agglutinating language: Choguita Rarámuri (Tarahumara) variable suffix ordering.Morphology. Special Issue on Affix Order

    Jenks, Peter & Sharon Rose. 2011. High Tone in Moro: Effects of Prosodic Categories and Morphological Domains. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory

    Fieldwork Researchers