Professor of Linguistics, DAAS
baptistm@umich.edu
Office Information:
Linguistics, 462 Lorch Hall-1220
phone: 734.763.6279
Afroamerican and African Studies
Education/Degree:
Ph.D., Harvard University, 1997
About
Marlyse Baptista, Associate Professor of Linguistics and CAAS, studies the morpho-syntax interface in pidgin and creole languages, combining corpus data with the use of theoretical, descriptive and technological tools. Her research explores the ways creole languages inform linguistic theory and to what extent linguistic theory, in turn, helps understand how creole grammatical systems operate. Her latest book Noun Phrases in Creole Languages, co-edited with Jacqueline Guéron (2007), investigates the syntax and semantics of noun phrases in 15 creoles while highlighting the interpretive variation and complexity of bare nouns. She also examines theories of language change, language creation and creole formation; she focuses on the precise identification of the cognitive processes involved in contact situations. The applied side to her work considers literacy issues and orthographic choices confronting the representation of creoles in Education, as in the case of Cape Verdean Creole.
Affiliation(s)
Field(s) of Study
- Contact linguistics, syntactic theory, morphosyntax of pidgins and creoles
