Graduate Students
Bethany Lycan
Started: 2021 - Greenberg Fellow
My primary interests include usage-based syntax, typology, and language revitalization.
Bruno Pinto Silva
Started: 2022 - Greenberg Fellow
My main interests include the documentation and description of languages labeled “Creoles” and “Pidgins.” I am particularly interested in contributing to the description of the Phonetics and Phonology of these languages. For the last eight years, I have been working on Haitian Creole.
More info...
Danielle Angier
Started: 2023
My research interests are in syntactic and semantic change, specifically in terms of how diachronic evidence can be used to explain synchronic variation. I am particularly interested in identifying contexts for change and the mechanisms through which change occurs and leads to the variation we see today, following a usage-based, constructional perspective.
Daven Hobbs
Started: 2018 - Greenberg Fellow
My research interests are in cognitive and historical/evolutionary linguistics. For my dissertation I am building a diachronic corpus of texts in Tupi, an indigenous language of Brazil, to track changes in its morphosyntax over a period of roughly five centuries.
Debbie Wager
Started: 2010
I study discourse-level phenomena in American Sign Language. In some recent papers I have investigated discourse markers, conversational repair sequences, and mental spaces theory. I'm a TA in the Core Writing Program, teaching English 101 and 102.
Devin Tankersley
Started: 2020 - Greenberg Fellow
Devin is a researcher in the Lobo Language Acquisition Lab, working on topics related to phonological features of ASL and effects of language deprivation on neurodevelopment. His research interests also include documentation and analysis of Taiwan Sign Language, focusing on phonological patterns and lexical variation.
Eliza Forrest (they/them)
Started: 2024 - Greenberg Fellow
Eliza is a PhD student in Linguistics. Their interests are at the intersection of sociolinguistics, disability studies, and accessible design. They are the lab manager of the Lobo Language Acquisition Lab where they work on educational outreach projects that focus on language diversity and linguistic bias.
Frances Jones
Started: 2017
My research interests include language contact, language variation, and language documentation. My primary focus is on language use in New Mexico, which I explore by documenting and describing varieties of English in the state from a variationist sociolinguistic perspective, as well as analyzing language contact effects between English and Spanish in New Mexican communities.
Ivette S. González
Started: 2020
My research interests are in documentary linguistics and the revitalization of indigenous languages of California. I work in collaborative projects to document the Paipai language (Yuman, ISO code ppi) spoken in the peninsula of Baja California, Mexico.
Gonzalez, Ivette S. 2020. Paipai (Baja California, Mexico) – Language Snapshot. Language Documentation and Description 17, 150-157.
Joonyeop Baek
Started: 2016
My main research areas are Cognitive Semantics and Pragmatics. I am interested in studying the conceptual structures of our mind within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. To be more specific, I want to find out how the implicit conceptual systems such as metaphor, mental spaces, viewpoints influence our thinking process, and how they are disclosed in our language uses.
Lee Ferrin (she/her/ella)
Started: 2024
Lee's research interests are methods of language revitalization, as well as documenting child speech and child-directed speech in endangered and low-resource languages. For more info, see leeferrin.com
Mariana Willenbrink-Marchesi (She/Ella)
Started: 2020
Originally from Argentina, Mariana is a PhD student in Linguistics, currently working on her dissertation proposal. Her academic background includes an MA in TESOL and a BA in K-12 ESL education. Her research focuses on children's acquisition of minority languages, specifically examining how child heritage speakers use demonstratives in both Spanish and English in terms of form and function. One of her current goals is to advocate for the use of bilingual corpora as the target parameter in bilingual language acquisition analysis, instead of the traditional normative monolingual benchmarks.
Meagan Vigus
Started: 2016 - Greenberg Fellow
As a recipient of the Greenberg Fellowship, I am interested in understanding the cognitive underpinnings of language through the analysis of typological data. My research focuses mostly on verbal semantics, argument structure, and argument structure alternations in a cross-linguistic perspective. I'm also involved in the Uniform Meaning Representation project.
Motomi Kajitani
Started: 2008
I am interested in cognitive pragmatic analyses of discourse markers from crosslinguistic perspectives. My current research topics are interactions among exemplification, hedging, topic management, stance, and mirativity.
Rachid Lazhar Saghrouni
Started: 2010
In my dissertation research, I seek to determine how preschool-aged, Tunisian Arabic-speaking children learn to use their morphologically complex verbs productively. By viewing the emergence of linguistic productivity as a tradeoff between computation and storage, I seek to demonstrate that the controversial dichotomous characterization of productivity as either gradient or categorical is a fake dichotomy.
Samuel Melada
Started: 2022
I am a Neuroscience Nurse Educator at UNM hospital, and I am particularly interested in the neuro anatomy of language. I am also very interested in Discourse Analysis related to healthcare and how medical ethics are discussed and the ways in which patients interact with the healthcare system and nurses, doctors and other healthcare providers.
Sarah Lease
Started: 2022 - Greenberg Fellow
In my research, I draw on usage-based approaches and acoustic methods to study language acquisition and variation among Spanish-speaking children and adults. Within this, I am mostly concerned with understanding the extent to which the cumulative usage of words in specific contexts shapes production and lexical representation.
More info...
Sean Lundergan
Started: 2023 - Greenberg Fellow
I'm interested in sociophonetics, phonetic and phonological variation, and dialect contact. I've previously studied leveling of regional vowel features in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Sharifa Bahri
Started: 2018
I study the bilingual brain. I am fascinated with how bilinguals process and produce languages in conversations with other bilinguals speaking the same languages. I focus my research on bilingual Saudi Arabians who are fluent in Arabic and English. In my free time, I travel and share some of my adventures online — it’s fun being a traveling linguist!
Shewar Khan
Started: 2024
Akasha Khalsa
Started: 2024
Alec Goldberg (he/him/they/them)
Started: 2023
I research Diné Bizaad, or the Navajo language. I have contributed to research with child learners, as well as working with the children directly on the “other side of the camera.” As a learner, I will also be serving as a Diné Bizaad tutor during this academic year.
Annie Merrill (she/her)
Started: 2024
Having barely scratched the surface of linguistics, I don't yet know what I wish to focus on. Broadly stated, my goal is to develop a broad understanding of different areas of linguistics and identify what interests me most. I am fascinated by semiotics and the creation of meaning, especially in relation to other mediums like music, but I find morphology problems fun to solve. I love looking at the ways that languages clash, change, and affect each other.
Isaac Brown
Started: 2023
Isaac Brown earned his BA in Linguistics (minor: Honors Interdisciplinary Studies) and his BA in Languages (French & Russian) at UNM in 2020. His research interests include semantics, morphosyntax, typology, and translation processes. He also has a keen interest in East Asian languages’ orthographies and the educational merits of constructed languages.
Jennifer Dominguez (she/her)
Started: 2024
My BA is in Languages from UNM with a focus on French and Spanish. I attended the French Summer Immersion program at UNM, and the International Exchange program at l’Université de Montréal. I grew up in El Paso, Texas where I learned border Spanish, and spent three years in Nayarit, Mexico. My research interests include sociolinguistics, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, and sociophonetics, especially as they pertain to border culture, Canadian culture, police interactions, and the language of veterans.
Jing Yang
Started: 2022
My research interests include semantic, cognitive linguistics and computational linguistics.
Josh Del Villar (he/him)
Started: 2024
My research interests include sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, language acquisition and more. I'm particularly excited by the interactions and clashes and growth where cultures and languages interact. If I'm not reading, I'm probably running or camping somewhere.
Kei Dotson (she/her)
Started: 2022
Undergraduate degree in psychology from NMSU. My main interests are morphosyntax and typology, with specific interest in the Japanese language
Karina Schenk (she/her)
Started: 2025
My research interests are extensive because I am always excited to keep learning! Some of my favorite research interests right now include morphosyntax and child language acquisition, specifically acquisition in bilingual children. Morphosyntax, bilingual language acquisition, and sociolinguistics create an important foundation to understand the academic needs of children and youth. Understanding these needs will pave a future with stronger, more informed educators who can reach more students and build lifelong learners. I aim to make a valuable contribution to these goals.
Kelly Knupp (he/him)
Started: 2022
My BA is in languages: Spanish and German, with coursework in Arabic, and general– & Hispanic linguistics. My principal interests are variationist sociolinguistics and language variation & change across phonetics/phonology, morphosyntax, and lexicon. My interests also include language contact, dialectology, Hispanic linguistics, and L2 pedagogy. I speak fluent Spanish and German, and elementary Arabic.
Kendal Jacobson
Started: 2024
Logan Ballou
Started: 2024
Marin Alemán (they/them)
Started: 2024
I have a BA in Anthropology from USFQ (Quito, Ecuador). My main research interests are language description and language documentation, particularly related to Ecuadorian Highland Kichwa, Afro-Esmeraldeño Spanish, and the Barbacoan languages. I am also interested in historical and queer linguistics.
Melanie Kirk-Lente
Started: 2024
Munis Nazzal (he/him)
Started: 2023
I am a Fulbright scholar from Palestine, pursuing a master's degree in linguistics. My research interests span sociolinguistics, language and gender, psychology of language, and semantics. As a native Arabic speaker, I am also fascinated by comparative linguistics. Despite being fully visually impaired, I have experience in translation, interpreting, and teaching Arabic and English. I aim to inspire others, especially those with visual or other impairments, to reach their potential.
Wil MacNeil
Started: 2022
My research interests are in viewpoint constructions in co-speech gesture with a specific focus on gesture in stand-up comedy narratives. I also dabble in sociophonetics and metaphor from a cognitive point of view.
