Megan Jane Crowhurst is an Australian- and Canadian-raised linguist and Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin in the United States.

Career

Crowhurst earned her BA in linguistics at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

(1985) and the MA and PhD at the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it ...

(1989 and 1991). She has held academic positions at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

, the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC, UNC–Chapel Hill, or simply Carolina) is a public university, public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States. Chartered in 1789, the university first began enrolli ...

, and, since 1999, in the Department of Linguistics at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

. She works in the area of

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

, researching aspects of prosody, especially prosodic morphology, phonological stress, and the perception of rhythm. Often focusing on documenting these aspects within

endangered language An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a " dead langua ...

s, she has conducted fieldwork with speakers of Tupi-Guarani languages in

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

and speakers of Zapotec in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Honors and distinctions

Crowhurst was a member of the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...

(LSA) task force that created the Women In Linguistics Mentoring Alliance (WILMA) to provide a system to offer mentoring opportunities for female linguists. She also served on the LSA committee, Endangered Languages and Their Preservation, chairing the committee in 2001. Crowhurst has served as the Senior Associate Editor (2016-2017) and Co-editor (2017-2020) of the journal

Language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

. She is a co-founder of the LSA journal Phonological Data and Analysis. Crowhurst was inducted as a

Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned or professional societies, the term refers ...

in January 2021.

Selected publications

Megan J. Crowhurst. 2019. The Iambic/Trochaic Law: Nature or Nurture? ''Language and Linguistic Compass''.
Megan J. Crowhurst. 2018. The influence of varying vowel phonation and duration on rhythmic grouping preferences among Spanish and English speakers. ''J. Phonetics'' 66 (Jan.), 82–99.
Megan J. Crowhurst. 2018. The joint influence of vowel duration and creak on the perception of internal phrase boundaries. ''J. Acoustical Society of America'' 143(3), EL147-153.
Megan Crowhurst. 2016. Iambic-Trochaic law effects among native speakers of Spanish and English. ''Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology'' 7(1), 12. https://doi.org/10.5334/labphon.42
Megan Crowhurst and Sara Trechter. 2014. Vowel-rhotic metathesis in Guarayu. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 80, 127–173. https://doi.org/10.1086/675421
Megan Jane Crowhurst and Lev D. Michael. 2005. Iterative footing and prominence-driven stress in Nanti (Kampa). ''Language 81(1), 47-95.'' https://doi.org10.1353/lan.2005.0013

References

External links

LSA Member Spotlight: http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/january-2016-member-spotlight-megan-crowhurst Video, "Beyond the Iambic-Trochaic Law": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0wiCzy4YBA Faculty page at UT Austin: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/linguistics/faculty/crowhurs The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America—South American Languages Collection of Megan Crowhurst: *https://www.ailla.utexas.org/islandora/object/ailla%3A124383 {{DEFAULTSORT:Crowhurst, Megan Women linguists University of Arizona alumni University of Texas at Austin faculty Living people Linguists of Uto-Aztecan languages Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America Academic journal editors 1961 births