Martha Ratliff is an American linguist and Professor Emerita at

Wayne State University Wayne State University (WSU) is a public research university in Detroit, Michigan. It is Michigan's third-largest university. Founded in 1868, Wayne State consists of 13 schools and colleges offering approximately 350 programs to nearly 25,000 ...

. She is a leading specialist in

Hmong–Mien languages The Hmong–Mien languages (also known as Miao–Yao and rarely as Yangtzean) are a highly tonal language family of southern China and northern Southeast Asia. They are spoken in mountainous areas of southern China, including Guizhou, Hunan, Yunn ...

and also notable for her reconstruction of Proto-Hmong–Mien. Ratliff earned a B.A. in English from Carleton College in 1968, an M.A.T. in English Education from

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

in 1970, and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from

in 1986, with a dissertation entitled ''The Morphological Functions of Tone in White Hmong''. She currently serves as an associate editor for the historical linguistics journal ''Diachronica''. She is co-founder of the

Southeast Asian Linguistics Society The Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (SEALS) is a linguistic society dedicated to the study of languages and linguistics in mainland and insular Southeast Asia. It was founded in 1991 by Martha Ratliff and Eric Schiller. Paul Sidwell is currently ...

along with Eric Schiller.

Publications

* * Manuscript. * *Newman, Paul and Martha Ratliff. 2001. ''Linguistic Fieldwork''. Cambridge University Press.

References

External links

Official faculty page
Linguists from the United States Linguists of Southeast Asian languages Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Wayne State University faculty Linguists of Hmong–Mien languages University of Chicago alumni Women linguists 20th-century linguists 21st-century linguists Historical linguists {{US-linguist-stub