revised 10-3-2001
Associate Professor, Department of Theoretical Linguistics, University of Amsterdam
Postal address, Telephone numbers, and E-mail addresses:
Work Address:
Spuistraat 2101012 VT AmsterdamThe Netherlands |
| Tel: +31-20-525-3855
Fax: +31-20-525-3021 |
| Secretary
Tel: +31-20-525-3864 |
| E-mail: nsmith@hum.uva.nl
E-mail: glasbak9@hotmail.com |
Academic Development
Academic Specialisms and Interests
Hobbies
Personal
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I have always been particularly interested in segmental structure. Initially this interest manifested itself in terms of a concern about what the correct features within an SPE model of phonology might be. In the late 70's I was converted to Autosegmental Phonology, and in the early 80's I adopted a Dependency Phonology-type model involving a reductionistic approach to the types of phonological elements involved. In 1993 I was converted to Optimality Theory.
Vowel harmony attracted me for what it could tell phonologists about the features of vocalic place. The idea was that these features should determine the types of vowel harmony encountered in the languages of the world.
The basic place features should be the same for vowels and consonants. This should have interesting consequences for cross-manner assimilation. While not in itself a new observation - the relation between Labials and Rounded vowels, for instance, had been seen long before, the question arose of how to distinguish between Labials and Rounded consonants.
My major interests in the field of Creole Linguistics fall under the headings of Creole Genesis, Substrate Features and the Creole languages of the Guianas.
All these aspects were combined in my 1987 thesis on The Genesis of the Creole Languages of Surinam (Unpublished Dissertation, University of Amsterdam).
Towards creole genesis I maintain an eclectic approach. I feel that both universals and substrate features have a role in the explanation of the genesis of creole languages.
I feel that substrate features are required to explain more than phonological effects in creole languages. In what has been claimed to be the "deepest" creole - Saramaccan (a Maroon creole of Surinam) - grammatical markers have been identified deriving from Fon - a language spoken in Benin, such as the Contrastive Focus Marker we.
By the Guianas I refer to North-east Brazil, French Guiana, Surinam, Guyana, and South-east Venezuela - sometimes referred to as the five Guianas. The creole languages that I have devoted most time to up till now are Saramaccan, Sranan (spoken in Surinam) and Berbice Dutch (spoken in Guyana).
I have an abiding interest in all aspects of Scottish dialectology, whether in connection with Scotland's Germanic dialects, either Scots, English, Norse or mixed, or with its Celtic dialects, either Gaelic or Brittonic.
I have carried out fieldwork on various forms of Upper Strathearn Scots, in particularly that of the last Scots speaker in the clachan of Fowlis (Wester), near Crieff in Perthshire, Scotland. This work remains unpublished.
A long-standing hobby of mine is researching the ancestry of my children. Possibly unusually I am not only interested in who their ancestors were, but also in all their descendants.
On the Scottish side my family can be traced back to Caithness, Highland Perthshire, Berwickshire, Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire. Outside Scotland I have relatives in Canada, Australia, America, New Zealand, South Africa, Germany, Austria, and France.
On the Dutch side my wife's family can be traced back to Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Outside Europe she has relatives in Canada, South Africa and America.
I am very interested in the (pre-)histories of the various Celtic nations - both present and past. This abuts on my linguistic interests.
Overlapping with my interests in the languages of Scotland, and the history of the Celtic nations, is a general interest in various aspects of my native country.
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