Sabriya Fisher
Diana Chapman Walsh Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences
Research interests include sociolinguistics, language variation & change, varieties of English, and the language varieties of the African diaspora.
My research is broadly focused on language variation and change, with a particular focus on varieties of English and the language varieties of the African Diaspora. My dissertation work, funded by an NSF grant, examined syntactic change in the negation system of African American English in Philadelphia. Other projects I have worked on explore the perception and acquisition of sociolinguistic variation, changes in the sound system of Philadelphia English(es), and syntactic change in both general American English and French Guyanais Creole. My current work looks at morphosyntactic variation in the speech of high school students in the Boston and Philadelphia areas, and how their use of language interacts with their experiences in school.
I use a variety of methodological tools to study linguistic phenomena, including traditional sociolinguistic fieldwork, corpus linguistics, and experimental methods. I run the Sociolinguistics Lab at Wellesley, which offers opportunities for student mentorship in sociolinguistic research. I’m also an active member of the Linguistic Society of America and the American Dialect Society, and I have participated in the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics and the Caribbean Society for Linguistics.
At Wellesley, I teach courses that explore the intersection of language and society, how language varies, and how it changes over time. At the introductory/intermediate level, I teach Introduction to Linguistics (Ling 114), Sociolinguistics (Ling 238), and Language: Form and Meaning (Ling 244). At the advanced level, I teach seminars on Language Contact (When Languages Collide: Mechanisms of Language Emergence and Change/Ling 336) and Dialect Variation in American English (Ling 338).
Outside of linguistics, I enjoy running, listening to and playing music, travelling, cooking (eating more so), learning how to make wine, and spending time laughing with friends and family.
Education
- B.A., SUNY at Binghamton
- M.S., Université de Lyon
- Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Current and upcoming courses
Language: Form and Meaning
LING244
This course will consider some basic questions about language: What do we actually know when we know a language? How is the structure of language best described? Are there properties which all languages share, and what do those properties tell us about language itself? We will look at specific problems in morphology, syntax, and semantics, and the strengths and weaknesses of different linguistic theories will be considered. While many of the problems considered in this class will involve English, we will also be looking at other languages, both European and non-European.
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When Languages Collide: Mechanisms of Language Emergence and Change
LING336
What happens when users of different languages or dialects come into contact, either at the individual or community level? How do new languages emerge and what roles do social context and universal processes of language change, linked to human cognition, play in the outcome? This course explores the social, linguistic, and cognitive processes that contribute to the origins and development of contact languages (e.g., Mixed, Pidgin, Creole Languages). Topics explored include accommodation, borrowing, code-switching, language mixing, language shift, koineization, grammaticalization, and the emergence of new languages. The course will survey situations of language contact across the globe, introducing students to theories and models of language contact, which they will learn how to apply in analyzing both contemporary and historical linguistic data.