DeAndré A. Espree-Conaway

I am a field linguist and Ph.D. student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Oregon. My advisor is Don Daniels. My research investigates the evolution of linguistic diversity, with an eye toward the diversity of languages of the South Pacific (Rai Coast languages of New Guinea and the Kayanic languages of Borneo). My work has taken me to 30 countries, including Oceanic nations such as Indonesia (Borneo, West Papua), Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, and French Polynesia.

For me, the most important questions in language science are: What is language? And where does it come from? Taking a page out of Heraclitus’ book, ‘the only constant in life (and language) is change.’ Language is a complex adaptive system wherein the dynamics of language change (specifically the mechanisms of language diversification) adapt to the ecological conditions under which speakers live and interact. This ‘language ecology’ may create learning biases that shape the development of a given language. I suspect we might be able to get a glimpse of the true nature of language and its origins through this line of inquiry.

My main areas of focus are historical linguistics, language documentation & conservation, and morphosyntax in Austronesian, Papuan, and Oto-Manguean languages. I also have experience in Indo-European (Romance, Germanic, Celtic). My particular interests are voice systems, deixis, irrealis/realis, serial verb constructions, and tonogenesis.

I’m also interested in how the ecology of brains, bodies, genes, cultures, societies, and geographies mold languages, producing the diversity (or lack thereof) of languages we see today. To this end, I draw from a wide range of interdisciplinary methodological tools to answer questions concerning the nature and evolution of language. In particular, I look forward to including more psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics in my work.

I’m currently seeking collaborations in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. I’m also open to collaborative projects in other areas of evolutionary linguistics, including primatology (primate vocalization semantics, primate gesture), animal communication, paleoanthropology, genetics, and statistical physics.

For my dissertation, I’m planning an ‘evolutionary syntactic description’ of the small language of New Guinea. The current title is Arawum Grammar: Morphosyntactic Topics Investigating the Linguistic Niche Hypothesis (An Evolutionary Approach). I aim to describe this language of 60 speakers, combining language description with neuroimaging methods (fNIRS-EEG and fMRI).

In addition to linguistics, I’m a language learning enthusiast. I blog and vlog about language learning on the Taking Down Tongues website and my youtube channel. I also love documentaries (watching and filming them) and traveling. Being the adventure-loving soul I am, I’ve trekked the perimeter of Tahiti and sailed the Tuamotu Islands of Polynesia by cargo ship. I am the founder and CEO of the Bloomfield Language Institute.