David Mortensen

Assistant Professor of Linguistics, University of Pittsburgh

Email:	drm31@pitt.edu
Phone:	412.624.5483
Office:	2820 Cathedral of Learning
Jabber:	davidmortensen@gmail.com
AIM:	vamchoj
Address	University of Pittsburgh Department of Linguistics 2816 Cathedral of Learning Pittsburgh, PA 15260

• Valuable Institutions and Resources
• Rutgers Optimality Archive
• Phonoloblog
• Some Interesting Phonologists
  • Juliette Blevins
  • Jeff Mielke
  • Alan C. L. Yu
  • Gunnar Ólafur Hansson
  • Larry Hyman
  • Sharon Inkelas
  • Eugene Buckley
  • Sharon Rose
  • Rachel Walker
  • Ania Lubowicz
  • Paul de Lacy
  • Elliot Moreton
  • Mary Paster
  • Paul Kiparsky
  • Alexis Michaud
  • Marc Brunelle
  • Marc van Oostendorp

• Valuable Institutions and Resources
• Surrey Morphology Group
• Mediterranean Morphology Meeting
• Distributed Morphology: an overview
• Some Interesting Morphologists
• Sharon Inkelas
• Adam Albright
• Geert Booij
• Jeff Good
• Olya Gurevich
• Stephen R. Anderson
• Randy LaPolla

• Valuable Institutions and Resources
• Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus
• Oxford English Dictionary Online
• A. Richard Diebold Center for Indo-European Language & Culture
• Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database
• Some Interesting Historical Linguists
• James A. Matisoff
• Andrew Garrett
• Lyle Campbell
• Terrence Kaufman
• Martha Ratliff
• Zev Handel
• Gong Hwang-cherng

Introduction

I am an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh, having just finished a PhD in linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. My dissertation was entitled Logical and Substantive Scales in Phonology [PDF]. My research is centered around the diachronic and synchronic phonology and morphology of human languages, especially languages of So utheast Asia.

My curriculum vitae is available here

Research Interests

I work primarily on languages of East and Southeast Asia. The specific languages and groups in which I am interested and which I have worked on are as follows:

• Hmong-Mien
• Western Hmongic
• Pa-hng
• Tibeto-Burman
• Tangkhulic
• Jingpho

Separate from specific languages, I am interested in a variety of linguistic subfields and issues. Here is a representative outline of my theoretical interests:

• Phonology
• Tone
• Phonation type/register
• Chain shifts and other counterfeeding opacity
• Abstractness of phonological relationships
• Phonology-Morphology interface
• Morphology
• Compounding
• Process morphology
• Reduplication
• Phonological constraints on morphotactics
• Affix ordering
• Historical Linguistics
• Comparative reconstruction
• Reconstructing phonological grammars
• Speaker misunderstanding and misinterpretation as a source of linguistic innovation
• Language contact
• Language Description

Dissertation

My 2006 dissertation is called Logical and Substantive Scales in Phonology [PDF]. It argues that an adequate theory of phonology must include a representational mechanism that is both abstract (purely logical in form, potentially lacking a phonetic correlate) and n-ary (hierarchical or scalar rather than plus/minus or present/absent).

Recent Papers (outdated)

• (2006). “Diachronic universals and synchronic parochialisms: explaining tone-vowel interactions.” ms. University of California, Berkeley/University of Pittsburgh. In preparation for submission. [PDF]
• (2006). “Tonally conditioned vowel raising in Shuijingping Hmong.” Handout from the LSA 80th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, New Mexico. January 6, 2006. [PDF]
• (2005). “The emergence of obstruents after high vowels: a maladaptive sound change.” ms. University of California, Berkeley. To be submitted. [PDF]
• (2005). “The phonology of coordinate compounds.” ms. University of California, Berkeley. In revision for publication.
• (2004). “Abstract scales in phonology.” [ROA-667-0604]. In revision for publication. [PDF]
• (2004). “The emergence of dorsal stops after high vowels in Huishu” To appear in Proceedings of the 30th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. [PDF]
• (2004). “Preliminaries to Mong Leng (Hmong Njua) Phonology” Unpublished, UC Berkeley. [PDF]
• (2004). “The Development of Tone Sandhi in Western Hmongic: A New Hypothesis” Unpublished, UC Berkeley. [PDF]
• (2004). “Two Types of Variable Elements in Hmong Anaphora.” Submitted: Rose-Marie Déchaine & Martina Wiltschko (eds.), Pronouns as Epiphenomena, Oxford University Press (pre-review version). [PDF]
• (2004). “The emergence of dorsal stops after high vowels in Huishu” Handout from BLS 30, Berkeley. [PDF]
• (2004). “Semper Infidelis: Anti-identity in A-Hmao and Jingpho tone sandhi chains” Handout from LSA Annual Meeting, Boston. [PDF]
• (2003). “Comparative Tangkhul” Unpublished Qualifying Paper, UC Berkeley. [PDF]
• (2003). “Hmong Elaborate Expressions are Coordinate Compounds” Unpublished, UC Berkeley. [PDF]
• (2003). “Two Types of Variable Elements in Hmong Anaphora.” Handout from UBC Pronouns Workshop. [PDF]
• (2003). “Two Types of Variable Elements in Hmong Anaphora.” Unpublished, UC Berkeley. [PDF]
• (2003). “Post-Verbal Modifiers in Tangkhul.” Unpublished, UC Berkeley. [PDF]
• (2003). “Chain-shift, schmain-shift: Anti-Identity and Tone Sandhi in Hmong, A-Hmao, and Jingpho.” Handout from TREND 2003. [PDF]
• (2002). “Semper Infidelis: Theoretical dimensions of tone sandhi chains in Jingpho and A-Hmao”. Unpublished, UC Berkeley. [PDF]
• (2002). “The morph is a hard mistress: on the convoluted life and origins of Mong Leng quas”. Unpublished, UC Berkeley. [PS] [PDF]
• (2000). “Sinitic loanwords in two Hmong dialects of Southeast Asia”. Unpublished Honors Thesis, Utah State University. [PDF]