Doris L. Payne
Professor Emerita
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403
Phone: (541) 346-3894 E-mail: dlpayne@uoregon.edu
Doris L. Payne
Professor Emerita
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon, Eugene,
OR 97403
Phone: (541)
346-3894
E-mail: dlpayne@uoregon.edu
Publications & CV (updated 2024)
Nilotic Language Network
Maasai Language Project
Field work: Primarily
in urban cities, the Peruvian rainforest, the Venezuelan
savannah, and urban/rural Kenya.
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| A Yagua house: Peruvian Amazon | Field work is soooo tough. The view from our Yagua house |
Research
My research has focused on morphosyntax of little-studied
languages, from typological, functional, and cognitive
perspectives. A particular interest has been verb-initial
languages (Yagua,Panare,Maasai, some
Austronesian), and those where order of major consituents is
based primarily on cognitive - pragmatic factors such as
identifiability and contrastive focus (O'odham
or Papago). However, I have also worked on fairly rigid
grammatical relations languages (Chickasaw),
and various South
American languages. A growing research question is split
syntax.
Additional interests include sentence
and discourse processingissues in verb-initial languages, the
function of grammatical forms in discourse, and external
possession. I have had the priviledge of collaborating
in study of additional
languages with other investigators. Most recently, I
have been studying Maasai verb properties and working on a Maasai
dictionary with several students.
Professional Associations
Since 1974 I have worked with the Summer Institute
of Linguistics and normally teach in the Oregon Summer
Institute of Linguistics program.
In summer 1998, for example, I led an introductory field methods
course on Lunda (Bantu of Zambia), with Boniface Kawasha who is
beginning a graduate program in Linguistics at Oregon.
Since 1995 I have collaborated on a Maasai dictionary and text data base with the Maasai Cultural Center, with native Maasai speakers Leonard Kotikash and Kimeli Ole-Naiyomah and others, and students at the University of Oregon (Duke Allen, Austin Bush, Mitsuyo Hamaya, Kent Rasmussen, Cindy Schneider and others).
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