Associate Professor of Linguistics at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)
I am an Associate Professor (Professeur agrégé) in the Department of Linguistics at UQAM and hold the Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Transmission and Knowledge of the Inuit Language (SSHRC). My work examines the structure and properties of Inuktut, particularly Inuktitut, spoken in Nunavut, Nunavik, and Nunatsiavut; and Inuinnaqtun, spoken in western Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.
Research interests
My research interests encompass four main areas: verbal agreement, polysynthetic word formation, lexical and functional categories, and language documentation. In the area of verbal agreement, I am interested in the status and patterning of phi-markers in Inuktut, including how these interact with case alignment (particularly ergativity) and switch reference marking. My work also looks at the structure, categories, and properties of polysynthetic words—phenomena such as noun incorporation, verb incorporation, and word-internal modification that contribute to polysynthesis. This work has included collaborations with Anja Arnhold and Emily Elfner on the phonetic/phonological correlates of wordhood in Inuktut. My research also examines the inventory of lexical and functional categories in Inuktut, including the status of adjectival predicates and the structure of pronouns. I explore all these topics through the lenses of Minimalist Syntax and Distributed Morphology.
Finally, my interests extend to language documentation. I co-edited a dictionary of Inuinnaqtun with Emily Kudlak, former language officer of Ulukhaktok, NWT, that was published by Nunavut Arctic College Media. Additionally, I am currently collaborating with the Kitikmeot Heritage Society in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, on a corpus of spoken Inuinnaqtun and a community grammar.