Documentary, Descriptive, and Historical Linguistics Group

This research group spans the documentary/descriptive and the historical linguistics resesarch concentrations. Students, post-docs, and faculty in this group typically do fieldwork-based research on a language that has been under-studied and under-described. This commitment to primary fieldwork-based research often intersects with research in historical linguistics, an emphasis of several of our core faculty, and also with the other area specializations in the department, including sign language linguistics, phonetics/phonology, computational linguistics, and syntax/semantics. Our students often do work that connects language documentation and description with these other research areas. Many of the languages we work with are endangered, but some have large numbers of speakers. UT has special strengths in Latin American indigenous languages and languages of South Asia, and a number of our graduate students are themselves speakers of these languages. 

Core faculty in this research area are Ashwini Deo, Patience Epps, Danny Law, Karolin Obert, and Anthony Woodbury.