Maria Polinsky's Home Page

Research interests: •    Language universals and their explanation •    Comparative syntactic theory •    The expression of information structure in natural language •    Incomplete acquisition (heritage languages) •    Austronesian languages (esp. Malagasy, Maori) and languages of the Caucasus (esp. Tsez, Kabardian) Languages I have worked on: Abkhazo-Adyghe (Abkhaz, Kabardian) Austronesian (Malagasy, Tongan, Chuukese) Bantu (Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Swahili) Nakh-Dagestanian (Tsez, Bezhta, Rutul) Armenian Chukchi  Crimean Tatar Vietnamese

Life Story

Favorites (in no particular order): Tom Lehrer, Bach, the Beatles, Pieter Breugel

Best description of me: "Professor Polinsky has no faults" (from a course evaluation a long time ago, but, I can assure you, things haven't changed one bit).

Worst description of me: "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah" -- from my younger son, who is a subject (unwittingly) of some of my heritage language studies.