| Jeff Good |  | |
| jcgood@buffalo.edu | ||
| Assistant Professor | ||
| Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo |
Research interests
Languages and language areas: I consider myself to be primarily an Africanist, with a focus on Niger-Congo and, in particular, the Benue-Congo subgroup of that family. I'm particularly interested in the languages of the Cameroon-Nigeria border area and have done field work in Northwest Cameroon on languages of the Beboid family. In addition, I work on Saramaccan, an Atlantic creole (showing a good deal of West African influence in its lexicon and grammar) and Chechen (which has very little in common with the African languages I study, as far as I can tell). I have also done work on Turkish and Hokan languages of California.
Theoretical linguistics: My primary theoretical interest is the synchrony, diachrony, and typology of linear relations within morphology and syntax. Within this domain, I am particularly interested in understanding the typology of templatic constructions specifically and the range of possible linear stipulation in morphological and syntactic constructions more generally.
Digital linguistics: I am active in the emerging area of digital methods for language documentation and description and archiving. In particular, I am particularly interested in the development of new database models to facilitate comparative, typological, and descriptive work. As part of this research, I oversaw the transition of the Rosetta Project's language database to one built primarily on RDF data structures, a key component of the Semantic Web, and I now have a more general interest in anticipating and planning for the transition of linguistic research from traditional modes of publication to new models based on insights from the development of the web.
Publications available online
My CV (in .pdf format)
Projects
- The Rosetta Project
- Documentation and description of Naki, an Eastern Beboid language of Cameroon
- Documentation and description of the Western Beboid languages of Cameroon (funded by NEH)
- Salvage documentation of the Furu Awa languages, Busuu, Busho, and Bikyak (funded by NEH)
- Pangloss: An interlinear glossing tool within an existing application platform (funded by NSF)
- Montage: A suite of tools for language description and analysis
- The Comparative Bantu Online Dictionary (CBOLD)
- The Turkish Electronic Living Lexicon (TELL)
Students
- Nyurguyana Petrova, University at Buffalo, Multivariate properties of converbs in Sakha (Yakut) (chair)
- Joseph Farquharson, University of the West Indies, Mona Substrate Etymology: Tracing the West African Lexicon in Jamaican Creole (member of thesis committee, Silvia Kouwenberg, chair)
- Rebecca Voll, University of Leiden, A grammar of Mundabli (member of thesis committee, Maarten Mous, chair)
Organizations
- Electronic Metastructure for Endangered Languages Data (E-MELD)
- General Ontology for Linguistic Description (GOLD)
- The Open Language Archives Community (OLAC)
- The Digital Endangered Languages and Musics Archive Network (DELAMAN)
jcgood@buffalo.edu