Contact University of Massachusetts, Amherst Integrative Learning Center, N430 650 North Pleasant Street Amherst, MA 01003 fakkus@umass.edu

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. My work is at the intersection of theoretical syntax and its interfaces with morphology and semantics, with a focus on endangered and un(der)studied languages. I study cross-dialectal variation in sentence structure, building primarily on data collected through fieldwork on un(der)documented languages.

My descriptive work tends to illustrate and present patterns/data that are shared by most speakers of different subcommunities or subdialects; whereas in my theoretical work, I analyze constructions/patterns that are not necessarily found in the grammars of all subcommunities. 

I specialize in Arabic dialects—particularly the so-called peripheral varieties, Turkish, Mutki Zazaki and Cherokee.

You can find more information about my work and interests in the Research page.

My current work includes

ergativity and argument indexing in Iranian languages

the syntax of (indirect) causatives, with a focus on (Sason) Arabic

the ontology of implicit arguments

the syntax of speech act participants, with a focus on vocatives

indexical shift in Turkish and Iranian languages

investigation of (the limits of) contact-induced syntactic changes