My research brings grammatical patterns from lesser-studied languages to bear on key questions of linguistic theory. Many of my projects investigate the role of word-internal syntactic structure in the phonology and morphology of agglutinating languages. I focus mainly on A'ingae (or Cofán, ISO 639-3: con), an Amazonian isolate spoken by ca. 1,500 Cofán people in Ecuador and Colombia.
Syntax, semantics, morphosyntax, language variation and change, historical and comparative linguistics, language documentation and revitalization, Alaska Native and Native American languages (especially Aleut, Crow, Hidatsa, and Northern Pomo)