Lise Dobrin

I am a linguist trained in phonology and morphology, areas of grammar having to do with sound structure. My orientation might be called formalist, as opposed to functionalist--I am impressed by the degree to which linguistic form can serve as an 'anchor' or organizational reference point within a language's grammar, even apart from any meanings it conveys, and I am interested in how this tendency can be expressed theoretically. While my selection of topics is informed by larger theoretical concerns, I believe that our work is of most general and enduring value when it respects the lines laid down by languages themselves. This perspective is realized in my interest in fieldwork and language description.

My dissertation research was on the Arapeshan languages of Papua New Guinea. Working from both documentary sources and materials collected during fieldwork from 1997-1999, I explored the ways in which phonological form is systematically exploited in the partitioning of nouns in the language for purposes plural assignment and syntactic agreement. The theoretical emphasis of this research is on the nature of the lexical representations implied by such classification systems, and the consequences they have for a typology of noun class assignment rules. One paper in progress I have that extends this work is on Arapeshan plural formation, which lends strong support for schema theories of morphological organization.

Like so many of the world's "minor" languages, many Arapesh varieties are endangered. People in their 20s and 30s have only passive competence, and their children have hardly any knowledge of their ancestral tongue, using instead the PNG creole lingua franca Tok Pisin as the medium of daily life. In response to this, and with support from a NEH-DEL grant (the original proposal can be accessed at http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/del.html), I am now working on a collaborative project with David Golumbia (UVA English/Media Studies) and Daniel Pitti (IATH) to create digital archive of Arapeshan linguistic materials, including a dictionary, grammatical database, and texts representing various types of discourse. In addition to preserving information about the language in a robust and portable form, these will serve as a tool for work on a scholarly grammar and for the future development of pedagogical materials for use in Arapesh language schools.

My fieldwork in New Guinea was the springboard for a series of more culturally oriented projects as well. One analyzes the ways in which a non-native grammatical distinction, that between inclusive and exclusive forms of the first person plural, is adapted and exploited in Arapesh speakers' use of Tok Pisin pronouns to construct--or avoid constructing--social boundaries. An ongoing project (with Ira Bashkow) revisits the work on the Arapesh language and people carried out in the 1930s and 40s by Reo Fortune and Margaret Mead. Another project (with Jeff Good) explores the ethical and practical questions surrounding academic linguistics' institutionalized dependence on Christian mission information, tools, and infrastructure. Other work looks at the western agenda to help local people document and develop their endangered languages, and how this may be at odds with the community interests in the Melanesian Sepik, one the most linguistically dense and complex areas of the world.

Specializations

Morphology, phonology, Arapeshan languages, Hebrew, Tok Pisin, Melanesia, language shift/death/revitalization, language documentation/description.

Courses

Phonology, Morphology, Introduction to Generative Linguistics, Structure of English, Languages of the World, Endangered Languages, Literacy and Orality

Selected Publications

• Forthcoming. Concreteness in Grammar: The Noun Class Systems of Papua New Guinea Arapeshan. Stanford Studies in Morphology and the Lexicon.
• Forthcoming 2008. From Linguistic Elicitation to Eliciting the Linguist: Lessons in Community Empowerment from Melanesia. Language.
• 2007. (Coauthored with Ira Bashkow) The Anthropologist's Fieldwork as Lived World: Margaret Mead and Reo Fortune among the Mountain Arapesh. Paideuma 53:79-87.
• 2007. (Coauthored with Ira Bashkow) The Historical Study of Ethnographic Fieldwork: Margaret Mead and Reo Fortune among the Mountain Arapesh. History of Anthropology Newsletter 34(1):9-16.
• 2006. Saying Goodbye in the Field. Linguistic Discovery 4(1). Online at <http://linguistic-discovery.dartmouth.edu>.
• 2006. (Coauthored with Ira Bashkow) 'Pigs for Dance Songs': Reo Fortune's Empathetic Ethnography of the Arapesh Roads. In R. Darnell and F. Gleach (eds.), Histories of Anthropology Annual vol. 2, pp. 123-154. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
• 2005. When Our Values Conflict with Theirs: Linguists and Community Empowerment in Melanesia. In P.K. Austin (ed.), Language Documentation and Description, vol. 3, pp. 42-52. London: Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project.
• 2001. Arapesh. In J. Garry and C. Rubino (eds.), Facts About the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Languages, Past and Present, pp. 33-38. New York: Wilson.
• 1999. Lexical Splitting in the Kinship Vocabulary of the Buki (Arapesh) Languages. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia 28:99-119.
• 1998. The Morphosyntactic Reality of Phonological Form. In G. Booij and J. van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1997, pp. 59-81.
• 1996. Stress in the Modern Hebrew Verbal System: The Optimality of a Morphologically Limited Generalization. In 1994 Mid-America Linguistics Conference Papers, Volume I. Frances Ingemann (ed.), pp. 45-61.
• 1995. Theoretical Consequences of Literal Alliterative Concord. In A. Dainora et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Volume 1, pp. 127-142. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.
• 1993. Underdeterminacy in Prosodic Morphology. In K. Beals, et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the 29th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Volume 1, pp. 137-153. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.