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Claire Bowern

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Claire Louise Bowern
OccupationLinguist
Known forComputational phylogenetic classification of the Pama-Nyungan language family
TitleProfessor
AwardsKenneth L. Hale Award
Academic background
Alma mater
ThesisBardi Verb Morphology in Historical Perspective (2004)
Doctoral advisorJay Jasanoff, Calvert Watkins
Academic work
DisciplineLinguistics
Sub-disciplineAustralian Aboriginal languages, historical linguistics, language documentation
Institutions
WebsiteYale University webpage

Claire Louise Bowern (/ˈboʊərn/ BOH-ərn) is a linguist who works with Australian Indigenous languages.[1] She is currently a professor of linguistics at Yale University, and has a secondary appointment in the department of anthropology at Yale.[2]

Career

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Bowern received her PhD from Harvard University in 2004, under the advisement of Jay Jasanoff and Calvert Watkins. Her dissertation was about Bardi, a Nyulnyulan language, and its verbal morphology, both diachronically and synchronically.[3] In 2007, the NSF/NEH awarded her a grant to study Bardi texts from the 1920s.[4] The thesis also included a sketch grammar of Bardi, as well as the first attempted reconstruction of Proto-Nyulnyulan.[5]

She is the author of two widely used linguistics textbooks, Linguistic Fieldwork: A Practical Guide[6] and An Introduction to Historical Linguistics.

Chirila

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This section is about language database. For Romanian surname, see Chirilă.

At Yale, Bowern founded the Contemporary and Historical Reconstruction in the Indigenous Languages of Australia database (Chirila), through the Yale Pama-Nyungan Lab.[7][8] The name for the database was inspired by both the motivations of the project and the word for "echidna" in many Western Desert languages, tyirilya. Bowern's interest in the historical linguistics of Australian languages has directed the lab to collect lexical data for a more thorough accounting of the composition of the Pama-Nyungan language family.

Service

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Since 2015 she has been the vice president of the Endangered Language Fund.[9][10]

As of March 2022 Bowern is on the editorial review board for the following publications:

Bowern was previously an associate editor of Language, specifically responsible for the historical linguistics and language documentation areas from 2012 to 2016.

Awards and honors

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The Kenneth L. Hale Award was awarded to her in 2014, for her documentation work on Bardi.[17]

In 2020, Bowern was inducted as a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America.[18]

In 2023, Bowern was elected a new member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[19]

Key publications

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  • (2018) Bowern, Clare., Bouckaert, R.R., & Atkinson, Q.D. The origin and expansion of Pama–Nyungan languages across Australia. Nat Ecol Evol 2, 741–749 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0489-3
  • (2014) Bowern, Claire and Bethwyn Evans (eds). Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics. Basingstoke: Routledge.
  • (2012) Bowern, Claire. A Grammar of Bardi. Mouton de Gruyter.
  • (2011) Bowern, Claire. Sivisa Titan: Sketch Grammar, Texts, Vocabulary Based on Material Collected by P. Josef Meier and Po Minis. University of Hawaii Press.
  • (2010) Bowern, Claire and Terry Crowley. An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Fourth edition.
  • (2008) Bowern, Claire. Linguistic Fieldwork: A practical guide. Palgrave. (Online Materials) (2nd Edition 2015)
  • (2004) Bowern, Claire and Harold Koch (eds). Australian Languages: Classification and the Comparative Method. Benjamins

References

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  1. ^ "Claire Bowern - Google Scholar Citations". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 8 March 2018.
  2. ^ "Claire Bowern | Department of Anthropology". anthropology.yale.edu. Retrieved 8 March 2018.
  3. ^ "Harvard Linguistics Alumni, 2000s". Retrieved 8 March 2018.
  4. ^ "Claire Bowern – Professor, Yale Linguistics". campuspress.yale.edu. Retrieved 19 November 2017.
  5. ^ Bowern, Claire (2004). Bardi verb morphology in historical perspective (PDF). Retrieved 12 March 2022.
  6. ^ Rogers, Chris; Campbell, Lyle (2008). "Review of Linguistic Fieldwork: A Practical Guide". Anthropological Linguistics. 50 (3/4): 393–397. JSTOR 20639012.
  7. ^ "About the Chirila database". Yale Pama-Nyungan Lab. 13 January 2016. Retrieved 12 March 2022.
  8. ^ Bowern, Claire (2016). "Chirila: contemporary and historical resources for the indigenous languages of Australia" (PDF). Language Documentation & Conservation. 10: 1–45. Retrieved 11 March 2022.
  9. ^ "Endangered Language Fund". Archived from the original on 23 January 2015. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  10. ^ "Claire Bowern elected vice president of the Endangered Language Fund | Linguistics". ling.yale.edu. 23 January 2015. Retrieved 8 March 2018.
  11. ^ "Language Dynamics and Change (editorial board)". Language Dynamics and Change. Retrieved 11 March 2022.
  12. ^ "Diachronica". International Journal for Historical Linguistics. Retrieved 11 March 2022.
  13. ^ "Transactions of the Philological Society (editorial board)". Transactions of the Philological Society. Retrieved 11 March 2022.
  14. ^ "Routledge Studies in Historical Linguistics". Routledge Studies in Historical Linguistics. Retrieved 11 March 2022.
  15. ^ "EL Publishing". Editors and Advisory Board. Retrieved 11 March 2022.
  16. ^ "Conceptual Foundations of Language Science". Conceptual Foundations of Language Science. Retrieved 11 March 2022.
  17. ^ "Previous holders of the Kenneth L. Hale Award". Linguistic Society of America. Retrieved 11 March 2022.
  18. ^ "Linguistic Society of America List of Fellows by Year". Retrieved 11 March 2022.
  19. ^ "Nine Yale scholars elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences".
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