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Adam Werle received his BA in Linguistics from the University of Washington, and PhD in Linguistics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His interaction with the Linguistics Department at the University of Victoria dates to 2005, when he was a visiting scholar while researching Wakashan languages of Vancouver Island. He joined the UVic Linguistics faculty as Adjunct in 2009. In addition to his work in Linguistics, he has taught Makah language at Northwest Indian College, and Ditidaht language and culture at Ditidaht Community School (Nitinaht Lake, BC).
His theoretical research is mainly in the field of phonology, especially prosodic phonology, the syntax-phonology interface, and the prosodic and syntactic representations of clitics. He has published papers on the prosodic phonology of Ditidaht, and on consonant harmony in child language. He is also engaged in the documentation, analysis, and revitalization of Wakashan languages, having conducted field research on Makah, Ditidaht, and Kwak'wala. He contributes to ongoing efforts among Nuu-chah-nulth communities of the west coast of Vancouver Island toward unified action to preserve and teach their languages.
His recent theoretical work is guided by the hypothesis that the syntactic and prosodic properties of clitics result not from principles specific to clitics, but from general conditions on the well-formedness of prosodic structures, and on their correspondence to syntactic structures. His dissertation represents the results of this program as applied to Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian. He is currently investigating to what extent this approach can account for the unique properties of clitics in Wakashan languages.
Links
The Ditidaht FirstVoices archive