Nicholas Williams
- Alumni
- DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS
Graduated with PhD in 2016
Nick received his BA from Dartmouth College in 2008 and MA from CU ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ in 2011. Nick is currently abroad conducting research for his dissertation in Alor, Indonesia. His dissertation research focuses on place reference in everyday interaction in Kula. Kula belongs to the non-Austronesian Timor-Alor-Pantar family and is spoken by around 5,000 people in eastern Alor. Nick’s research has been supported by a Fulbright student research grant, an NSF-DEL dissertation improvement grant, as well as a PhD student fellowship from the Hans Rausing Endangered Language Documentation Programme. This research draws on work in (endangered) language documentation and conservation, interactional linguistics, and linguistic anthropology. Nick's specific research interests include spatial deixis and place reference, reference in conversation, gesture and multimodality, and the interactional basis of grammatical practice. In addition to work on Kula, he has done research on conversation in Jakarta Indonesian and Alor Malay.