Major topics
Afroasiatic languages: Kramer (Amharic, Egyptian, other Semitic, Cushitic), Zeldes (Egyptian, Semitic)
Applications of linguistics in careers beyond academia: Fond, Johnston
Applied linguistics: → Applied Linguistics concentration
Brain and language: Getz
Bilingualism/multilingualism: Bryfonski, Mackey, Ortega
Child language acquisition: Getz
Computational linguistics/NLP: → Computational Linguistics concentration
Corpora: Schneider, Zeldes
Cross-cultural & intercultural communication: Johnston, Tannen
Digital communication (online/social media): Gordon, Tannen
Discourse analysis: Fond, Gordon, Johnston, Tadic, Tannen
Education, teaching, and learning: Bryfonski, Mackey, Montee, Ortega, Tadic
Food and language: Gordon
Framing and/or metaphor: Fond, Gordon, Mackey, Tannen
Gender: Fond, Tannen (sociolinguistics of gender); Kramer (grammatical gender)
Health/medicine and language: Fond
Language endangerment, documentation, and revitalization: Obiri-Yeboah
Legal language: Schneider
Morphology: Kramer, Obiri-Yeboah
Multimodal/video analysis: Johnston, Tadic
Niger-Congo languages: Zsiga (Bantu, languages of West Africa), Obiri-Yeboah (Kwa, Gur, languages of West Africa)
Phonetics: Nycz, Obiri-Yeboah, Zsiga
Phonology: Obiri-Yeboah, Zsiga
Politeness: Portner (honorifics); Tannen (sociolinguistics of politeness)
Pragmatics: Mackey, Portner, Schneider, Zeldes
Psycholinguistics: Getz
Second language acquisition: Bryfonski, Mackey, Montee, Ortega
Semantics: Schneider, Portner
Social justice: Johnston, Ortega, Tadic
Sociolinguistics: → Sociolinguistics concentration
Syntax: Kramer (syntactic theory); Schneider, Zeldes (treebanks)
Syntax/semantics interface: Kramer, Portner
Technology and language: Bryfonski, Gordon, Ortega, Schneider, Tannen, Zeldes
Testing/assessment: Montee
Theoretical linguistics: → Theoretical Linguistics concentration
Typology: Kramer, Obiri-Yeboah
Variationist sociolinguistics: Nycz
Detailed topics by faculty
Bryfonski: second language learning and pedagogy, task-based language teaching, interaction and corrective feedback, language teacher training, individual differences in second language learning, language learning and technology, second language research methods, and meta-analysis. Lab website, STARTALK website
Fond: discourse/text analysis, metaphor theory and analysis, frame analysis, institutional interaction, medical humanities
Getz: child language acquisition, brain basis of language, statistical learning, miniature language learning, cognitive science, psycholinguistics, language processing, language and memory
Gordon: interactional sociolinguistics, analysis of conversational and narrative discourse, analysis of digital discourse, language and food, language and identity, intertextuality, metadiscourse, frame analysis, family interaction
Johnston: applied sociolinguistics, interactional sociolinguistics, multimodal discourse analysis, intercultural communication, language and power, institutional gatekeeping encounters, language & communication in the workplace, applications of linguistics in careers beyond academia
Kramer: morphology, syntax, linguistic theory, Distributed Morphology, grammatical gender, grammatical number, agreement, case-marking, typology, Afroasiatic languages, Semitic languages, Amharic, Ancient Egyptian
Mackey: second language acquisition, second language research methodology, input, interaction and corrective feedback, individual differences in second language learning, task-based language learning, metaphors, dialects, technology-driven L2 learning, children’s L2 learning.
Montee: language testing and assessment, computer-based language testing, rater training and scoring, language assessment literacy, language teacher education, young language learners, language program evaluation. AELRC website
Nycz: sociophonetics, second dialect acquisition, dialect contact, language variation and change, language and place, vowels
Obiri-Yeboah: phonology, phonetics-phonology interface, syntax-phonology interface, morphophonology, language documentation, ATR vowel harmony, tone, nasality, African Studies; Gua, Akan and other Kwa languages
Ortega: second language acquisition, bilingualism and multilingualism, meta-analysis, L2 writing, technology and language learning, teacher-researcher interfaces, critical global language education, social justice and decolonial theories. IMS website.
Portner: formal semantics, modality, mood, allocutivity and honorifics, tense, aspect, clause types, imperatives, interrogatives, exclamatives, speech acts, discourse semantics, expressive meaning, logic
Schneider: computational syntax/semantics (treebanks, parsing); corpus annotation and evaluation for NLP; adpositions; lexicon, multiword expressions, and constructions; metalanguage; legal interpretation. Frameworks include: AMR CCG CGEL SNACS UD. Lab website
Tadic: conversation analysis, membership categorization analysis, multimodal analysis of interaction, analysis of (in)equality and inclusion/exclusion in interaction, institutional discourse, (second language) classroom discourse, addressing possible -isms in (classroom) interaction, managing discussions on diversity and inequality in the classroom
Tannen: interactional sociolinguistics, conversational and narrative discourse, conversational style, power and solidarity in interaction, cross-cultural communication, repetition and intertextuality, family discourse, language and gender, spoken and written discourse, the relationship between conversational and literary discourse, linguistics for general audiences
Zeldes: corpus annotation, discourse relations, Rhetorical Structure Theory, anaphora resolution, Universal Dependencies, Digital Humanities (esp. for the Coptic language), information structure, low-resource NLP. Lab website
Zsiga: phonological theory, phonetics, phonology/phonetics interface, Articulatory Phonology, L2 phonology and phonetics, tone