Donna B. Gerdts (

Halkomelem Halkomelem (; in the Upriver dialect, in the Island dialect, and in the Downriver dialect) is a language of various First Nations peoples of the British Columbia Coast. It is spoken in what is now British Columbia, ranging from southeastern ...

: Sp’aqw’um’ultunaat) is professor of linguistics and associate director of the First Nations Languages Program at

Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located from ...

. She is a syntactician who has worked most extensively on

and

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

. She has created extensive teaching materials for Halkomelem, and is currently engaged in further research on the language, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Some of her key areas of interest are: syntactic theory,

language typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...

and

universals In metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things. For exa ...

, the syntax/morphology interface, and the form and function of grammatical categories. Gerdts earned her Phd in Linguistics from the University of California at San Diego. Gerdts was editor of ''

International Journal of American Linguistics The ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' (''IJAL'') is an academic journal devoted to the study of the indigenous languages of the Americas. ''IJAL'' focuses on the investigation of linguistic data and the presentation of grammatical ...

'' from 2014 to 2019. She was a founding co-editor of the '' Northwest Journal of Linguistics'', and currently serves on its editorial board. She also worked as an associate editor of ''Language'', a journal produced by the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...

. In 2008, Gerdts was president of the

Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) is an international organization founded in 1981 devoted to the study of the indigenous languages of North, Central, and South America. SSILA has an annual winter meeti ...

Research and Works

Gerdts has researched and written extensively o
Halkomelem
an

and proposed syntactic theor

an offshoot of

Relational Grammar In linguistics, relational grammar (RG) is a syntactic theory which argues that primitive grammatical relations provide the ideal means to state syntactic rules in universal terms. Relational grammar began as an alternative to transformational gra ...

. She has also created substantive educational materials on Halkomelem, including a talking dictionary and school materials for students and teachers in the First Nations Representatives and Nanaimo School District No. 68.

Mapping Theory

Gerdts proposed Mapping Theory in 1992 as an offshoot of Relational Grammar that takes into account the association between grammatical relations and morphosyntactic argument structure. There are no levels between grammatical relations and the argument structure, and instead of using a universal inventory of grammatical relations, Mapping Theory posits "morphosyntactically-licensed argument positions," or MAPs.

Mapping Halkomelem Grammatical Relations (1993)

In this article, Gerdts gives a relational profile for Halkomelem. She starts by arguing that the relational profile of a language is related to its morphosyntactic argument structure and uses this as a starting point for Mapping Theory. She defines relational profile as an account of the systematic constructions in a language's grammar, emphasizing that grammatical constructions are not random. A relational profile for Halkomelem would be that it is a direct object-centered language, because "rules of the grammar pivot on the concept ''object'', while the concept ''indirect object'' seems to be irrelevant."

Mapping Korean Grammatical Relations (1993)

In this article, Gerdts provides an outline of Korean grammar based in Mapping Theory, and concludes that Korean is a 2-MAP language, despite the fact that it displays characteristics of languages that allow more MAPs.Gerdts, Donna B. (1993) "Mapping Korean Grammatical Relations," in S. Kuno et al. (eds.), ''Harvard Studies in Korean Linguistics V: Proceedings of the 1993 Harvard International Symposium on Korean Linguistics'', Hanshin Publishing Company, Seoul, Korea, 299-318.

Additional Works

* * * * * *

Teaching

Gerdts teaches classes on languages of the

First Nations First Nations or first peoples may refer to: * Indigenous peoples, for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area. Indigenous groups *First Nations is commonly used to describe some Indigenous groups including: **First Natio ...

, which are indigenous languages of southern Canada. More specifically, she teaches courses on narrative and discourse structure, morphology and syntax, and socio-cultural and cognitive aspects of First Nation Languages. She also teaches more general linguistics courses, on field methods and description analysis. Graduate students who she taught have contributed to linguistic literature through their theses in a variety of languages, including but not limited to:

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

ASL American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is express ...

Azeri Azerbaijanis (; az, Azərbaycanlılar, ), Azeris ( az, Azərilər, ), or Azerbaijani Turks ( az, Azərbaycan Türkləri, ) are a Turkic peoples, Turkic people living mainly in Azerbaijan (Iran), northwestern Iran and the Azerbaijan, Republi ...

Breton Breton most often refers to: *anything associated with Brittany, and generally ** Breton people ** Breton language, a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken in Brittany ** Breton (horse), a breed **Ga ...

Hausa Hausa may refer to: * Hausa people, an ethnic group of West Africa * Hausa language, spoken in West Africa * Hausa Kingdoms, a historical collection of Hausa city-states * Hausa (horse) or Dongola horse, an African breed of riding horse See also * ...

Kashmiri Kashmiri may refer to: * People or things related to the Kashmir Valley or the broader region of Kashmir * Kashmiris, an ethnic group native to the Kashmir Valley * Kashmiri language, their language People with the name * Kashmiri Saikia Baruah ...

Koine Greek Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...

, Korean, Kunuz Nubian,

Okanagan The Okanagan ( ), also known as the Okanagan Valley and sometimes as the Okanagan Country, is a region in the Canadian province of British Columbia defined by the basin of Okanagan Lake and the Canadian portion of the Okanagan River. It is part ...

, and Shuswap.

References

External links

Gerdts' home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gerdts, Donna Linguists from the United States Linguists from Canada Living people American women linguists Linguists of Salishan languages Year of birth missing (living people) Linguists of Korean