Introduction
I am an Assistant Professor
in Linguistics
at the University of
Pittsburgh. My research is centered around the diachronic
and synchronic phonology and morphology of human languages,
especially languages of Southeast Asia. I completed a PhD
in linguistics
at the University of
California, Berkeley in 2006. My dissertation was
entitled Logical and Substantive Scales in Phonology
[PDF].
You can visit my personal website
at www.davidmortensen.org.
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 on which I have worked are as follows:
- Hmong-Mien
- Farwestern Hmongic
- Mashan Hmongic
- Tibeto-Burman
- Tangkhulic
- Kuki-Chin
- Jingpho
Aside 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
- Phonetics-Phonology interface
- 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 and Documentation
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).
Courses Taught
Undergraduate
- Ling 1441: Field Methods
- Ling 1578: Phonetics and Phonemics
- Ling 1579: Phonology
- Ling 1773: Morphology
- Ling 1951: Languages of the World
Graduate
- Ling 2441: Field Methods
- Ling 2578: Phonetics and Phonemics
- Ling 2579: Phonology
- Ling 2580: Topics in Phonological Theory
- Ling 2773: Morphology
- Ling 3773: Advanced Morphology
Papers Available for Download
in press
- Mortensen, David R. and James A. Miller (in press). “A reconstruction of Proto-Tangkhulic
rhymes.” Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman
Area. [Pre-publication
PDF]
- Mortensen, David R. (in press). “Tonally conditioned vowel raising in
Shuijingping Mang.” Journal of East Asian Linguistics. DOI:
10.1007/s10831-013-9102-6
[Pre-publication
PDF]
2013
- Mortensen, David R. (2013), “Lexical Prefixes and
Tibeto-Burman Laryngeal Contrasts.” Proceedings of the
37th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 272-286.
[PDF]
2012
- Mortensen, David R. (2012). “The emergence of dorsal stops after high vowels.”
Diachronica 29(4):
434-470. DOI:
10.1075/dia.29.4.02mor
[Pre-publication PDF]
- Vercellotti, Mary Lou and David R. Mortensen (2012). “A
classification of compounding in American Sign Language: an
evaluation of the Bisetto and Scalise framework.”
Morphology 22(4):
545-579. DOI: 10.1007/s11525-012-9205-1
2011
- Mortensen, David R. and Jennifer Keogh (2011). “Sorbung, an
undocumented language of Manipur: its phonology and place in
Tibeto-Burman.” Journal of the Southeast Asian
Linguistics Society 4(1):
64-114. [PDF]
2010
- Mortensen, David R. (2010). “Does Hmong allow noun
incorporation?” WSU Linguistics Program
Colloquium. [PDF]
2009
- Mortensen, David R. and James A. Miller
(2009). “Proto-Tangkhul Onsets in Comparative Perspective.”
International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and
Linguistics 42, Chiangmai, November
4. [PDF]
2006
- Mortensen, David R. (2006). “Tonally conditioned vowel raising in
Shuijingping Hmong.” Handout from the LSA 80th Annual
Meeting, Albuquerque, New Mexico. January 6,
2006. [PDF]
2004
- Mortensen, David R. (2004). “Abstract scales in phonology.”
[ROA-667-0604]. In revision for publication.
[PDF]
- Mortensen, David R. (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]
- Mortensen, David R. (2004). “Preliminaries to Mong Leng (Hmong Njua)
Phonology” Unpublished, UC Berkeley.
[PDF]
- Mortensen, David R. (2004). “The Development of Tone Sandhi in Western
Hmongic: A New Hypothesis” Unpublished, UC Berkeley.
[PDF]
- Mortensen, David R. (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]
- Mortensen, David R. (2004). “The emergence of dorsal stops after high vowels
in Huishu” Handout from BLS 30, Berkeley.
[PDF]
2003
- Mortensen, David R. (2003). “Comparative
Tangkhul” Unpublished Qualifying Paper, UC Berkeley.
[PDF]
- Mortensen, David R. (2003). “Hmong Elaborate
Expressions are Coordinate Compounds” Unpublished, UC
Berkeley.
[PDF]
- Mortensen, David R. (2003). “Two Types of Variable
Elements in Hmong Anaphora.” Handout from UBC Pronouns
Workshop.
[PDF]
- Mortensen, David R. (2003). “Two Types of Variable
Elements in Hmong Anaphora.” Unpublished, UC Berkeley.
[PDF]
- Mortensen, David R. (2003). “Chain-shift, schmain-shift: Anti-Identity
and Tone Sandhi in Hmong, A-Hmao, and Jingpho.” Handout from
TREND 2003. [PDF]
2002
- Mortensen, David R. (2002). “Semper Infidelis: Theoretical
dimensions of tone sandhi chains in Jingpho and A-Hmao”.
Unpublished, UC Berkeley.
[PDF]
2001
- Mortensen, David R. (2000). “Sinitic loanwords in two Hmong dialects of
Southeast Asia”. Unpublished Honors Thesis, Utah State
University. [PDF]
Software
- WebComparator. A browser-based database front-end for managing
comparative linguistic data.
- HsSPE.
A Haskell library for implementing SPE-style rule-based
phonologies.
- NetSPE.
A web-based interface to HsSPE, a Haskell library implementing
SPE-style, rule-ordered phonology.
- Alternate
Holidays. A simulation of self-organizing behavior
with regards to holiday travel.
