Dr. Richard Compton will join the McGill Linguistics Department this fall as a post-doctoral research fellow in connection with Mi’gmaq and Ergativity research projects. Richard received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, where he completed his dissertation on the syntax and semantics of modification in Inuktitut, a language on which he has conducted extensive field research. Most recently, he has been teaching linguistics as an adjunct assistant professor at Queen’s University. In addition to Inuktitut, Richard’s research interests include syntax, word formation, polysynthesis, and noun incorporation.
We are also joined this month by Dr. Jakob Leimgruber, of Freiburg University, who will conduct post-doctoral research toward his Habilitation with Prof. Charles Boberg, funded by a Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Union. Jakob began his Habilitation research at Freiburg after receiving his Ph.D. from Oxford University in 2009. His work at McGill, entitled “Language Planning and Attitudes in Quebec”, is part of a three-part comparative study of the sociolinguistics of English in different contexts. The first two phases of the research were conducted in Singapore and Wales and a resulted in a book published this year by Cambridge University Press: Singapore English: Structure, Variation and Usage.
Stay tuned for upcoming colloquium talks by both Richard and Jakob!