| Citizenship | USA |
| Education | |
| 1982 - 1986 | Stanford University, Department of Linguistics: Ph.D., October 1986 (Dissertation: "Categories and relations in syntax: the clause-level organization of information"; Joseph H. Greenberg, principal advisor) |
| 1979 | University of California, Davis: nonmatriculated student, International Relations |
| 1974 - 1978 | The University of Chicago: A.B. (general honors), Linguistics, June 1978; A.M., Linguistics, December 1978 |
| Positions | |
| 2006 - present | Department of Linguistics, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA (Professor, 2006-2018; Professor Emeritus, 2019- ) |
| Courses taught: Grammatical Analysis, Morphosyntax, Introduction to Language Change, Semantic Analysis, Typology and Universals, Formal Syntactic Theories, and graduate seminars on the typology of information structure, verbal semantics, mental spaces and discourse, and construction grammar | |
| Ph.D dissertations supervised: | |
| Dissertations completed: 8 (Erin Wilkinson, Ahrim Kim, José Hugo García-Macías, You-Min Lin, Christopher Adam, Jason Timm, Tim Zingler, Michael Regan); In progress: 5 (Sook-kyung Lee, Pavlína Kalm, Lindsay Morrone, Meagan Vigus, Lukas Denk) | |
| Dissertation committee member: | |
| Dissertations completed: 4 (Angus Grieve-Smith, Daniel Sanford, Jenny Dumont, Clayton Beckner, Logan Sutton) | |
| 1994 - 2005 | Linguistics and English Language, School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures (until 2004: Department of Linguistics), University of Manchester, Manchester, UK (Senior Research Fellow, 1994; Lecturer, 1994-1996; Reader, 1996-1998; Professor, 1999-2005) |
| Courses for lower-level undergraduates:Principles of Linguistics; Language, the Individual and Society; Discourse Analysis; Grammatical Semantics | |
| Courses for upper-level undergraduates and MA students:Typology; Cognitive Linguistics; Construction Grammar; Child Language; Pragmatics (co-taught); Grammatical Change (co-taught); Sociolinguistics [Speech Pathology students] | |
| Number of Ph.D theses supervised: | |
| Theses completed: 5 (Chiaki Taoka, Syed Zainal Ariff Syed Jamaluddin, Yoshikata Shibuya, Hiromi Azuma, Naoki Nakajima) | |
| 1986 - 1993 | Program in Linguistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA (Assistant Professor) |
| General courses: Languages of the World, Introduction to Cognitive Science (co-taught), Introduction to Language (co-taught) | |
| Courses for undergraduate majors/beginning graduate students: Grammatical Analysis, Introduction to Cognitive Grammar, Functionalism and Typology, Semantics and Pragmatics, Theory of Natural Language Structure (cotaught), Verbal Semantics (undergraduate seminar) | |
| Courses for graduate students: Advanced Typology, Advanced Semantics and Pragmatics, Cognitive Approaches to Grammar (seminar), Functional Linguistics (seminar), Topics in Typology (seminar) | |
| Number of Ph.D. dissertations supervised: | |
| Dissertation chair: 2 (Timothy Clausner, Satoshi Uehara); Dissertation committee member: 2 | |
| 1981 - 1982 | Regional Civil Engineer - Western Region, U.S. Air Force, San Francisco, California, USA (Computer Specialist) |
| 1981 | U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, San Francisco District, San Francisco, California, USA (Program Analyst) |
| 1979 - 1981 | Headquarters, Military Sealift Command, U.S. Navy, Baileys Crossroads, Virginia, USA (Program Analyst) |
| Visiting appointments | |
| 2019, December | Summer Institute of the Centre of Excellence, Dynamics of Language (CoEDL), University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia (Visiting Professor) Lecturer, "An evolutionary approach to language change" |
| 2019, April | Department of Languages and Literature, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden (Visiting Professor) |
| 2017, June | Department für Anglistik, Amerikanistik und Romanistik, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität, Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany (lectures on construction grammar and semantics) |
| 2013, March | 1st International Winter School on Evolution, Applied Evolutionary Linguistics Lab, Faculty of Science, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal (Instructor, "Evolutionary models meet sociohistorical linguistics") |
| 2012, May-June | Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l'Asie orientale, L'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France (Directeur d'Études associé) |
| 2011, July | Summer Institute of the Linguistic Society of America, Boulder, Colorado, USA (Instructor, "Mathematical modles of language change" [with Richard Blythe, University of Edinburgh]) |
| 2011, June | Summer Institute of Linguistics program, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, North Dakota, USA (Guest speaker, various courses and lectures) |
| 2010, November | China International Forum on Cognitive Linguistics, Beijing, China (Lecturer, "Construction grammar and typology") |
| 2010, May | Complex Systems Summer School, Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA |
| 2009, July | Summer Institute of the Linguistic Society of America, Berkeley, California, USA (Instructor, "Construction grammar and typology") | 2007, July | International Summer Atelier, Modeling Language Evolution with Computational Construction Grammar, Ettore Majorana Foundation and Center for Scientific Culture, Erice, Italy (Tutorial and master class on construction grammar, lecture and master class on evolution and grammaticalization, panel on evolution and language) |
| 2007, July | Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie, Leipzig, Germany (Visiting Research Scientist) |
| 2006, May | Symposium on Cognitive Patterns in Language, Institute for Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark (Visiting professor, Master class) |
| 2005, Jun-July | Summer Institute of the Linguistic Society of America, Harvard/MIT, USA (Instructor, "Syntactic Categories: Formal and Functionalist Approaches" [with Mark Baker]) |
| 2005, March-April | Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie, Leipzig, Germany (Visiting Research Scientist) |
| 2004, October | Institut for Nordiske Studier og Sprogvidenskab, Københavns Universitet, Copenhagen, Denmark (Visiting professor, Master class) |
| 2003-2004 | Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California, USA (Fellow) |
| 2003 [declined] | Summerschool in Typology, Università di Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy (Lecturer) |
| 2003, July | Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie, Leipzig, Germany (Visiting Research Scientist) |
| 2003, June | Summerschool in Cognitive and Functional Linguistics, The International Center for Semiotic and Cognitive Studies, University of San Marino, San Marino (Lecturer) |
| 2002, March | Linguistics Program, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan (Visiting Professor) |
| 2002, August | Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie, Leipzig, Germany (Visiting Research Scientist) |
| 2001, April | Dipartimento di Filologia Moderna, Università degli studi di Napoli «Federico II», Naples, Italy (Visiting Professor, Socrates programme) |
| 2000, January | National Graduate School of Linguistics (LOT) Winterschool, Leiden, the Netherlands (Lecturer, "Language Typology") |
| 1999-2000 | Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie, Leipzig, Germany (Visiting Research Scientist) |
| 1999, December | Department of Language and Information Sciences, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan (Visiting Professor) |
| 1998, Aug-Sept | Sommerschule der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft, Mainz, Germany (Lecturer, "Typology and Cognition") |
| 1996, Jun-July | Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen, the Netherlands (Visiting Research Scientist) |
| 1996, May | Institut für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Mainz, Germany (Visiting Professor) |
| 1995, Jun-Aug | Summer Institute of the Linguistic Society of America, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA (Instructor, "Introduction to Syntax" [undergraduates]) |
| 1995, May | Institutionen för Lingvistik, Lunds Universitet, Sweden (Visiting Professor, Erasmus programme) |
| 1995, April | Dipartimento di Linguistica, Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italy (Professore a contratto) |
| 1993, Sept-Dec | Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen, the Netherlands (Visiting Research Scientist) |
| 1993, Jan-Aug | Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford, California, USA (Visiting Research Scientist) |
| 1993 [declined] | Seminario de Lenguas Indígenas, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Ciudad de la Investigación en Humanidades, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México (Lecturer, Typology) |
| 1992, July | Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen, the Netherlands (Visiting Research Scientist) |
| 1989, Sept | III. Sommerschule der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft, Hamburg, Germany (Lecturer, "Cognitive Categories") |
| 1987, Jun-Aug | Summer Institute of the Linguistic Society of America, Stanford University, USA (Instructor, "Semantic Typology and Commonsense Reasoning" [with Jerry Hobbs]) |
| 1987, Jun-Aug; 1986, Jun-Aug | Artificial Intelligence Center, SRI International, Menlo Park, California, USA (Consultant) |
| Awards | |
| 2017 | Fellow, Cognitive Science Society |
| 2016 | Fellow, Linguistic Society of America |
| 2015 | Honorary Member, Association Française de Linguistique Cognitive |
| 2013 | Lifetime Achievement Award, Evolutionary Linguistics Association |
| 1978 | Phi Beta Kappa |
| Grants | |
| 2022 - 2025 | Consultant for National Science Foundation (Nianwen Xue [Brandeis University], principal investigator), "Building a Broad Infrastructure for Uniform Meaning Representation" (NSF 2213804) |
| 2018 - 2022 | National Science Foundation (Nianwen Xue [Brandeis University], principal investigator; James Puestejovsky [Brandeis University], Martha Palmer and Andrew Cowell [University of Colorado], and William Croft [University of New Mexico], co-principal investigators): "Developing a uniform meaning representation for natural language processing" (NSF 1764091); four research associates supervised |
| 2015 - 2020 | Defense Threat Reduction Agency grant: "Developing language independent event representations that are inferrable from linguistic expressions in large corpora" (HDTRA1-15-1-0063); four research associates supervised |
| 2008 | Resource Allocation Committee grant, University of New Mexico: "Quantifying Semantic Shifts in Reconstructing Language Families"; one research associate supervised |
| 1998 - 1999 | British Academy Humanities Research Board, Research Leave Scheme: released from duties for Autumn Semester 1998-99 to complete manuscript on language change. |
| 1996 - 1997 | Research Support Fund, University of Manchester: "The Typology of Attributive Constructions"; one research associate supervised. |
| 1992 | Rackham Faculty Grant, University of Michigan: research on lexical semantic change; one research assistant supervised. |
| 1991 | Office of the Vice President for Research Discretionary Funds, University of Michigan: summer research assistant support for "A Framework for Descriptive Grammars". |
| 1991 | International Partnerships Grant, University of Michigan: German-American workshop on a framework for descriptive grammars, Ann Arbor, 1-7 April 1991. |
| 1990 - 1993 | National Science Foundation [William Croft and Bernard Comrie, principal investigators]: "A Framework for Descriptive Grammars"; one research assistant supervised. |
| 1988 - 1991 | Presidential Initiatives Fund, University of Michigan [Steven Lytinen, project director; William Croft, Susan Gelman and John Laird, collaborators]: "A Cognitive Science Model of Language Acquisition"; one research assistant supervised. |
| 1988 | Rackham Faculty Fellowship, University of Michigan: to complete manuscript for volume on typology and universals. |
| 1987 - 1988 | Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, University of Michigan: development of and teaching assistant for the course "Grammatical Analysis". |
| University Administration | |
| University of New Mexico | |
| 2017 - 2018 | Member, Senior Promotion Committee, College of Arts and Sciences |
| 2017 - 2018 | Executive Committee, Department of Linguistics |
| 2013 - 2018 | Member, Committee on Governance, University of New Mexico |
| 2012 - | Member, Bilinski Fellowship Selection Committee, College of Arts and Sciences |
| 2012 - 2014 | Member, Senior Promotion Committee, College of Arts and Sciences |
| 2010 - | Graduate Advisor/Graduate Committee Chair, Department of Linguistics |
| 2010 - 2015 | Executive Committee, Department of Linguistics |
| 2010 - 2012 | Library Representative, Department of Linguistics |
| 2008 - 2009 | Interim Chair, Department of Linguistics |
| 2006 - 2009 | Graduate Committee, Department of Linguistics (Chair, 2006-2008) |
| 2006 - 2008 | Personnel Committee, Department of Linguistic (Chair, 2007-2008) |
| 2006 - 2008 | Executive Committee, Department of Linguistics |
| University of Manchester | |
| 2004 - 2005 | Postgraduate Recruitment Officer, Linguistics and English Language, School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures |
| 2004 - 2005 | Tutor, Single Honour students in Linguistics, Linguistics and English Language, School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures |
| 2001 - 2002 | Arts Faculty Working Group on Teaching Assistants and University Graduate Teaching Assistant Working Group |
| 2001 - 2003 | Postgraduate Recruitment Officer, Department of Linguistics |
| 2000 - 2003 | Promotions Committee, School of English & Linguistics |
| 2000 - 2003 | Tutor, Single Honour students in Linguistics, Department of Linguistics |
| 1997 - 99, 2000-1, 2002-3 | Examinations Officer, Department of Linguistics |
| 1997 - 1998 | University Library Committee |
| 1996 - 2000 | University Senate (elected member, 1996-1999; ex officio member, 1999-2000) |
| 1995 - 1999 | Secretary to the Departmental Board, Department of Linguistics |
| 1995 - 1999 | Tutor, Joint Honours students in Linguistics and Foreign Languages, Department of Linguistics |
| 1994 - 1997 | Library Officer [acquisitions], Department of Linguistics |
| 1994 - 1997 | Board of Studies, Speech Pathology Programme |
| University of Michigan | |
| 1991 - 1992 | Cognitive Science Study Committee |
| 1991 | Proposal reviewer, International Partnerships Program |
| 1989 - 1991 | Curriculum Committee, Program in Linguistics (Co-chair, 1990-1991) |
| 1987 - 1989 | Executive Committee, Cognitive Science and Machine Intelligence Laboratory |
| 1986 - 1989 | Steering Committee, Program in Linguistics |
| Professional Activities | |
| 1994 - present | Coeditor, Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory |
| 2009 - present | Editorial Board, Typological Studies in Language |
| 2004 - present | Editorial Board, Constructional Approaches to Language |
| 1992 - present | Editorial Board, Studies in Language Companion Series |
| 2010 - present | Editorial Board, Linguistic Typology |
| 2010 - present | Consulting Editor, Australian Journal of Linguistics |
| 2009 - 2011 | Consulting Editor, Language and Linguistics |
| 2009 - present | Consulting Editor, International Journal of Cognitive Linguistics |
| 2009 - present | Consulting Editor, Constructions and Frames |
| 1992 - present | Consulting Editor, Linguistics |
| 1989 - present | Consulting Editor, Cognitive Linguistics |
| 1992 - present | Advisory Board, Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung |
| 1992 - present | Advisory Board, Languages of the World |
| 1992 - 2013 | Consulting Editor, Studies in Language |
| ongoing | Manuscript reviews: Language, Journal of Linguistics, Lingua, Folia Linguistica, Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, Journal of Semantics, Journal of Pragmatics, Functions of Language, Linguistic Typology, Diachronica, Anthropological Linguistics, Journal of Child Language, International Journal of American Linguistics, Southwest Journal of Linguistics, Journal of East Asian Linguistics, Himalayan Linguistics, Linguistic Discovery, Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, Foundations of Science; Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Longman, Basil Blackwell, University of Chicago Press, MIT Press, Edinburgh University Press |
| ongoing | Proposal reviews: National Endowment for the Humanities (USA), National Science Foundation (USA); Economic & Social Science Research Council (UK); British Academy (UK); Leverhulme Trust (UK); Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK); Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Netherlands), Vetenkskapsprådet (Sweden); Austrian Academy of Sciences (Austria), Max Planck Gesellschaft (Germany), Australian Research Council (Australia) |
| Professional Organizations | |
| 2001 - present | International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology |
| 1996 - present | Association for Linguistic Typology (founding member) |
| 1996 - 2005 | The Philological Society |
| 1994 - 2005 | Linguistics Association of Great Britain |
| 1993 - present | Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas |
| 1989 - present | International Cognitive Linguistics Association |
| 1983 - present | Linguistic Society of America (Life Member) |
| Other Activities | |
| 2015 - present | Member, Board of Directors, Save-the-Redwoods League |
| 2015 - present | Chair, Science and Restoration Committee, Save-the-Redwoods League |
| 2000 - present | Member, Science and Restoration Committee (formerly Research Committee), Save-the-Redwoods League |
| 1987 - present | Councilor, Save-the-Redwoods League |
| 2006 - present | Instructor, Albuquerque Unitarian Church Folkdancers |
| 1987 - 1992 | Instructor, University of Michigan Folkdance Club |
| 1990 - 1992 | Producer and announcer, Medieval Radio, WCBN-FM, Ann Arbor. Michigan |
| 1978 - 1986 | Producer and announcer, The Early Music Program, KPFA-FM, Berkeley, California |
| 1975 - 1978 | Producer and announcer, various music programs, WHPK-FM, Chicago, Ill. |