I am an assistant professor at the Department of Linguistics of the University of Saskatchewan.  I am fascinated by linguistic diversity, especially in the context of American Indigenous languages.  The overarching aim of my research is to understand linguistic structures by analysing their function in natural speech and uncovering the various processes that shaped them over time.  In particular, I am interested in the social, interactive and discursive underpinnings of language change.  Most of my research is based on corpora of spontaneous conversational data.

One of the top priorities of my work is the documentation and description of endangered languages.  The geographic area that I have primarily worked in is the foothills of the eastern Andes mountains and the lowlands of the western Amazon basin, one of the most linguistically diverse regions in South America.  I have worked for over a decade together with members of the Shiwiar Nation to document Shiwiar, a Chicham (Jivaroan) language spoken in eastern Ecuador and northern Peru.  I am also currently developing relationships with other communities (particularly the Kamsá Nation in Colombia, as well as First Nations and Métis communities in Saskatchewan), and I look forward to the projects that might ensue from these new collaborations.

I have a broad range of interests within linguistics.  Most of my published work so far has revolved around articulatory and acoustic phonetics, focusing in particular on nasalisation, co-articulation, whispered speech and resyllabification.  However, most of my current strands of research are in the areas of morphology, syntax and areal typology.  The main themes that I seek to explore in my work are variation and contact, especially with regards to language change.