Embedded Files
I recently received my PhD in linguistics at Stony Brook University, where I studied syntactic theory and variation, Romance syntax, the linguistics of emojis, and colloquial and minoritized language varieties. I was advised by John Frederick Bailyn.
You can find my current academic CV here! (updated Aug 14 2025)
In my doctoral dissertation, Projecting (your) voice: A theory of inversion and defective circumvention, I investigate colloquial agreement alternations in (mostly) English and Spanish inversion constructions and what these tell us about the syntax of A-movement, agreement, argument structure, and voice phenomena. I am currently expanding this framework to include case studies of several clause types in Spanish, as well as comparative work on English and Setswana.
Before that, I completed a BA at New York University, where I double majored in linguistics and sociology, with a minor in Spanish.
I was born and grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas, except for the year of high school that I spent in Asunción, Paraguay with the Rotary Youth Exchange Program. As such, I am a native speaker of Ozark English and a non-native speaker of Paraguayan Spanish. I am also currently making (or have made) attempts at aquiring Russian, Brazilian Portugese, and Setswana.
Outside of linguistics, I enjoy reading about sociology, cognitive science, education, Ozark history, human sеxuality, ecology, and Lord of the Rings.
A note on my name: My first name is not John, it is John David. This follows the naming convention of double first names, which, while not specific to the southern United States, is quite popular there. I can be felicitously referred to as John David or JD, but never just John (and especially not just David). While represented orthographically as two words, my name is best conceived of as a single constituent with the phonetic form /ʤɑnˈdeɪvɪd/ or /'ʤeɪ'di/.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse