My research is focused on the documentation, description and comparison of the indigenous languages of South America. I am also interested in the typology and diachrony of grammatical relations and other related argument marking phenomena. I am currently involved in a number of initiatives to develop multimedia dictionaries and a cultural encyclopedia with communities that speak endangered languages in southwestern Amazonia. My other ongoing research involves historical linguistics, such as phylogenetic methods, the comparative reconstruction of grammar and lexicon, and the development of lexical databases.

Educational history:

Ph.D. Linguistics, Radboud University Nijmegen, 2014
M.A. Linguistics, University of Montana, 2008

B.A. Anthropology, University of Montana, 2007

Selected publications:

Birchall, J., Jordan, F. M. and Oliveira, L. H. A. de. (2019) Nota sobre o sistema de parentesco em Proto-Tupí-Guaraní [Note on the kinship system in Proto-Tupí-Guaraní]. Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Ciências Humanas, 14(1): 79-99.

Birchall, J. (2018) Historical change in reported speech constructions in the Chapacuran family. Journal of Historical Linguistics, 8(1): 7-30.

Birchall, J., van der Voort, H., Aikanã L. and Aikanã, C. (2017) Aikanã. In Kristine Stenzel and Bruna Franchetto (eds.), On this and Other Worlds: Voices from Amazonia, 411-444. Berlin: Language Science Press.

Birchall, J., Dunn, M. and Greenhill, S. J. (2016) A combined comparative and phylogenetic analysis of the Chapacuran language family. International Journal of American Linguistics, 82(3): 255-284.

Birchall, J. (2015) A comparison of verbal person marking across Tupian languages. Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Ciências Humanas, 10(2): 487-518.

Birchall, J. (2014) Argument marking patterns in South American languages. LOT: Utrecht.

Representative courses:

LING 322/522 Grammatical Analysis
Ling 417/517: Typology and Universals
Ling 425/525: Semantic Analysis
LING 490/590 Data Science and Data Curation