About & Contact
contact us at snail.conference@gmail.com
Purpose of SNAIL
The Pacific Northwest (PNW) Sprachbund is large, spanning from parts of Alaska and British Columbia, to Northern California, and as far east as portions of Montana. The similarities of the languages were observed by both Sapir, and then later his student Swadesh (1953). Later linguists would go on to further describe the similarities of languages in the area (e.g. Thompson and Kincade 1990, Beck 2000, Mithun 2000). More recently, the area has seen thriving language revitalization and reclamation work, often through university and tribal partnerships, such as at the University of Oregon, Simon Fraser University, and the University of Washington. This conference seeks to provide a venue for language speakers, artists, communities, and linguists to come together to share knowledge and celebrate the beauty and diversity of languages within the PNW Sprachbund.
Meet Your Organizers
Dr. Jordan AG Douglas-Tavani
Dr. Jordan AG Douglas-Tavani recently finished his Ph.D in Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Jordan is an enrolled member of the Central Council of Tlingit & Haida Indians of Alaska. His work is centered on indigenous language description and revitalization. For the last 5 years, Jordan has worked with the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians on revitalizing one of their tribal languages: miluk tɬiis. He is interested in complex morphosyntax and linguistic typology and language contact within the Pacific Northwest.
Professor Shahar Shirtz
Shahar Shirtz is an Assistant Professor of English at Arizona State University. He is affiliated with the linguistics, applied linguistics, and TESOL programs. His interests include linguistic typology and constructional models of grammar, with a focus on the grammatical and lexical means deployed by language users to express various discourse functions. In his research, he combines quantitative and qualitative methods, and concentrates primarily on Indo-Iranian languages and the languages of the Pacific Northwest.
Shown Above: Cryptomastix germana (Pygmy Oregonian), Photo by Casey H. Richart