Name Alice Harris | Role Linguist | |
Books Historical Syntax in Cross‑Lin, The Blue Jean, Georgian Syntax: A Study in, The Wedding Album, The White T | ||
Alice Carmichael Harris (born November 23, 1947) is an American linguist. She is currently Professor of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she has been employed since 2009.
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Research
Citing an early interest in the “systematic, almost mathematical aspects of languages,” Harris began investigating ergativity in graduate school, and in doing so began to study the Georgian language. She was one of the first Americans allowed to do research in the Republic of Georgia when it was still part of the Soviet Union. She has continued to work in this region, looking at different characteristics of the languages Georgian, Laz, Svan, Mingrelian, Udi, and Batsbi. Harris also has a strong interest in promoting the larger topic of documenting endangered languages. She played a key role in establishing the Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL) Program, a granting sub-unit that is part of the National Science Foundation.
Career
Harris received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Harvard University in 1976 after studying at Randolph-Macon Women's College, the University of Glasgow and the University of Essex.
She taught at Vanderbilt University from 1979-2002, serving as the department chair of Germanic and Slavic Languages there from 1993-2002. She was Professor of Linguistics at SUNY Stony Brook from 2002-2009.