Ruth Kramer Department of Linguistics University of California, Santa Cruz 1156 High St. Santa Cruz, CA 95064 rkramer-at-ucsc-dot-edu

Research

I am a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the linguistics department at UC Santa Cruz. My research centers on two languages: Amharic and Ancient Egyptian, both members of the Afroasiatic language family. My current thesis research incorporates data from both languages and investigates two aspects of the syntax-morphology interface: how syntactic cylicity affects morphological (post-syntactic) cyclicity, and the relationship between syntactic and morphological agreement. My C.V. has further information about my past and present research activities.

Selected Papers

2007. The Amharic definite marker and the syntax-morphology interface. Ms., University of California, Santa Cruz.

[The Amharic definite marker provides evidence that some morphological operations (like Local Dislocation) are subject to the Phase Impenetrability Condition. This is a preliminary version of the paper, and feedback is very welcome. Please contact me before distributing or citing.]

To appear.VSO and SVO word order in Middle Egyptian. In The Proceedings of the 35th Annual North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics, ed. C. Häberl. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press.

[This paper contains an interlocking account of the dominant (VSO) and alternative (SVO) word orders in Middle Egyptian, as well as the agreement asymmetry between them (rich agreement in SVO, no agreement in VSO). The analysis of the agreement asymmetry appeals to morphological agreement, and provides support for the idea of cyclic spell-out by phase.]

2006. Root and pattern morphology in Coptic: Evidence for the root. In The Proceedings of NELS 36, eds. C. Davis, A.R. Deal and Y. Zabbal. 399-412. Amherst: GLSA.

[Many recent accounts of root and pattern morphology downplay or eliminate the role of the consonantal root in word formation, but evidence from Coptic demonstrates that the root is essential. A more detailed version of the paper is in Phonology at Santa Cruz 7, and available here.]

Teaching, etc.

2007-2008: Dissertation year fellowship

Egyptian

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