My research centers on the documentation and description of threatened and endangered languages. I work with Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in the Himalayas. I wrote a descriptive grammar of Darma for my doctoral dissertation from the University of Texas at Austin. Darma is one of three Western Himalayish languages spoken in the Pithoragarh District of Uttarakhand, India. Darma is spoken by about 1,800 people many of whom are shifting to Hindi and English. The other two Western Himalayish languages in the area where Darma is spoken are Byangkho (Byangsi) and Bangba (Chuaduangsi) — both are also considered endangered. In 2010 I started a documentation project for Bangba (Chaudangsi), which is ongoing.
A few years ago I decided to explore other areas of the Himalayas and after discussion with Gwendolyn Hyslop, decided to work on a project in Bhutan. There are nineteen languages identified for Bhutan and few of them have been studied, so there is a lot of work to do. This past spring I started working on the Khengkha Documentation and Description Project alongside a Rice Graduate Student Daniela Tijerina Benner. Khengkha is spoken by about 40,000 people in central Bhutan and there may be multiple varieties within the Kheng region.
I am interested in variety of issues that surround language endangerment such as globalization, language attitudes, multilingualism, language shift, language and identity, and language rights. Additionally I am interested in the intersection of language and culture and how language is used as a social tool. My approach to documentation and description is informed by anthropological approaches to the study of culture; specifically I am interested in observing, recording and analyzing language that comes from natural speech.