Professor Emerita of Linguistics at McGill
I have been part of the McGill Department of Linguistics since 1984 and became Professor Emerita in 2019. I continue to do research on my main areas of interest, which are the basic components of phrase structure, the processes that can manipulate this phrase structure, and how the details of this phrase structure are interpreted by morphology. Much of my work originates in questions raised by the structure of Malagasy, an Austronesian language spoken in Madagascar, a language I have been working on for over forty years.
Research interests
My current work centers on the role that head movement plays within syntax and at the interface between syntax and morphology. Questions about head movement have led me to look at larger questions about types of movement and how a movement typology can underlie language typology, how an understanding of the basic components of phrase structure may influence an understanding of movement types as well as an understanding of asymmetry in morphology (such as prefixes vs. suffixes). What is common to all of my research is a reliance on underdocumented languages such as Malagasy to give a more diverse picture of what phenomena need to be accounted for. While Malagasy is often my starting point, I often turn to data from other underdocumented languages as presented by other linguists. I have supervised PhD theses on a wide range of such languages, e.g. Amharic, Javanese, North Saami, and Ojibwe.