Language reclamation/revitalization is my primary focus and passion. My academic interests also include morphology and syntax, and orthography is of great personal interest.

Most recently, for my first qualifying exam, my research has led me to create a verb conjugating tool for the Unami variety of Lenape (Lënapei Lixsëwakàn), with the support of my advisor, Daniel Kaufman (Queens College, Endangered Language Alliance). The creation of this conjugator led to a number of proposals on Unami verbal morphology, and Algonquian more broadly, primary among them is that the ‘inverse’ marker –əkw is best defined as a default case theme sign, rather than a specified marker or the result of Impoverishment.

In the past, I have spent time learning and writing about Amazigh languages (while commonly referred to as “Berber” in English, this term is considered by some to be offensive, believed to be connected to the word for “barbarian/بربري”). Specifically, I looked at Moroccan varieties, in particular the standardized form and Tashelhit/ⵜⴰⵛⵍⵃⵉⵢⵜ. Below I have included a copy of my master’s thesis, “Language Policy, Prestige, and Stigma: A Case Study of Moroccan Amazigh Language Varieties”, which I had the privilege of presenting at the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics in 2019:

For an undergraduate typology class, I wrote a brief grammar of Tashelhit/ⵜⴰⵛⵍⵃⵉⵢⵜ:

During my undergraduate studies, I was a double major in linguistics and Arabic. I find the root and pattern system of morphology fascinating, as well as the wide diversity of varieties and its many loanwords in other languages (my Arabic knowledge allowed me to skip from beginner’s to intermediate Urdu when I was in a course for that language). While my research itself does not involve Arabic, it is of great interest to me and a major component of my background knowledge.