Early and personal life

Arienne Dwyer is the daughter of flutist

Doriot Anthony Dwyer Doriot Anthony Dwyer (; March 6, 1922 – March 14, 2020) was an American flutist. She was one of the first women to be awarded principal chair for a major U.S. orchestra (following hornist Helen Kotas, who was appointed principal horn of the C ...

, and a descendant of women's rights activist

Susan B. Anthony Susan B. Anthony (born Susan Anthony; February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) was an American social reformer and women's rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to s ...

Career

Arienne Dwyer has been a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

Linguistic Anthropology Linguistic anthropology is the interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life. It is a branch of anthropology that originated from the endeavor to document endangered languages and has grown over the past century to encompass mo ...

in the Department of

Anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

at the

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, and several satellite campuses, research and educational centers, medical centers, and classes across the state of Kansas. T ...

since 2001. She is also an affiliate Professor of Linguistics at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

. In 2010 she co-founded KU's Institute for

Digital Research Digital Research, Inc. (DR or DRI) was a company created by Gary Kildall to market and develop his CP/M operating system and related 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit systems like MP/M, Concurrent DOS, FlexOS, Multiuser DOS, DOS Plus, DR DOS and Gr ...

in the

Humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...

., and co-directed it until 2018. Dwyer conducts research into the

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

s and

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...

s of Inner and

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...

, especially languages in the Turkic,

Sinitic The Sinitic languages (漢語族/汉语族), often synonymous with "Chinese languages", are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute the major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is ...

, and Mongolic

families Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Ideal ...

. She earned her PhD in 1996 in Altaic and Chinese Linguistics at the

, and was a Humboldt postdoctoral research fellow and Volkswagen-DOBES grantee at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. She has also published pedagogical and linguistic materials for the

Uyghur language The Uyghur or Uighur language (; , , , or , , , , CTA: Uyğurçä; formerly known as Eastern Turki), is a Turkic language written in a Uyghur Perso-Arabic script with 8-11 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xi ...

. Her research is notable in arguing for the areal significance of Chinese Inner Asia as a Sprachbund, a region of language convergence. Her research also looks at issues of

language documentation Language documentation (also: documentary linguistics) is a subfield of linguistics which aims to describe the grammar and use of human languages. It aims to provide a comprehensive record of the linguistic practices characteristic of a given spee ...

, Open Access and

language ideology Language ideology (also known as linguistic ideology or language attitude) is, within anthropology (especially linguistic anthropology), sociolinguistics, and cross-cultural studies, any set of beliefs about languages as they are used in their soc ...

. In

2014 File:2014 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Stocking up supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic; Citizens examining the ruins after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping; Bundles of wat ...

, her work led to her being named a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Dwyer received NSF funding for and directed Institute on Collaborative Language Research (CoLang 2012), inviting Carlos Nash to be co-director. CoLang is an international training workshop in ''in situ''

supported by the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

, convening in even years. Since 2010, her collaborative work has focused on sharing analyzed language resources, including a pilot website ''Interactive Inner Asia'', which provided some samples of language materials based on Dwyer's VW-DOBES project, and the ''Uyghur 2.0'' website, which includes the Uyghur Light Verbs project (on the diachrony of modern Uyghur complex predicates), and the Analyzing Turki Manuscripts Online (ATMO) project (creating digital editions of late eastern Chaghatay/early modern

texts, with a focus on cultural and linguistic analysis of medical manuscripts, and

social network analysis Social network analysis (SNA) is the process of investigating social structures through the use of networks and graph theory. It characterizes networked structures in terms of ''nodes'' (individual actors, people, or things within the network) ...

Selected publications

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References

External links

IAIA: Interactive Inner Asia

Uyghur Light Verbs project ()

Annotated/Analyzing Turki Manuscripts Online
Arienne Dwyer
faculty home page at KU
CoLang 2012 webpage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dwyer, Arienne Linguists from the United States Women linguists Living people Linguists of Turkic languages University of Kansas faculty University of Washington alumni Year of birth missing (living people)