Macro-Jê linguistics, &c.

Besides being interested in all things Karajá (the Macro-Jê language which is the topic of both my MA thesis and my PhD dissertation), I’m mainly interested in historical linguistics and morphology (and, better yet, a combination of both). I’m currently working on:

• my (rather overdue) PhD dissertation, “A Grammar of Karajá”, which I shall have defended by the end of the current year;
• a reconstruction of Proto-Jê, which will soon be submitted for publication;
• a number of short papers on specific comparative topics (a comparison among the poorly-documented Macro-Jê languages of the Brazilian northeast, an investigation into the diachronic origins of a pattern of replacive morphology in Karajá, the description of some unsuspected caveats of long-range genetic comparison, etc.);
• an investigation, with Walkíria Neiva Praça (an expert on Tapirapé), into past and ongoing language contact in the Araguaia region (Central Brazil).

I have recently finished a paper, with Hein van der Voort (an expert on Rondonian languages), in which we propose the inclusion of the Jabuti family into the Macro-Jê stock. Although this claim is not completely original (we follow in the footsteps of the great ethnographer Curt Nimuendaju), it is a potentially controversial one. The paper will soon appear on IJAL.

In 2006, J. Pedro Viegas Barros and I organized a symposium for the 52nd International Congress of Americanists, "Advances in Native South American Historical Linguistics" (Seville, Spain). The program (including abstracts) is available here.