Margaret "Peggy" Speas is a

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

who works on

syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

, specifically

evidentiality In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and if so, what kind. An evidential (also verificational or validational) is the particul ...

and

Navajo The Navajo or Diné are an Indigenous people of the Southwestern United States. Their traditional language is Diné bizaad, a Southern Athabascan language. The states with the largest Diné populations are Arizona (140,263) and New Mexico (1 ...

. She is a Professor of Linguistics at the

University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst) is a public land-grant research university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts system and was founded in 1863 as the ...

. Speas received her PhD in Linguistics from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

in 1986. Speas's work focuses on differences between elicitation, documentation and linguistic data analysis on North American Native Languages. She also works with preservation of

and is a founding member of the

Navajo Language Academy The Navajo Language Academy (NLA; Navajo ''Diné Bizaad Naalkaah'') is a non-profit educational and advocacy organization which focuses on the Navajo language. Overview The Navajo Language Academy grow out of workshops by Kenneth L. Hale in the 1 ...

Work with language preservation

Peggy Speas has been heavily involved with the preservation of North American native languages, with focus on Navajo. She is a founding member of the Navajo Language Academy, where she has served as president for two years. Founded in 1997, the Academy is a nonprofit organization which promotes the study and preservation of Navajo. In the end of 1999, she finished her term as an associate editor on 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 ...

''. Speas is a co-author, with

Evangeline Parsons Yazzie Evangeline Parsons Yazzie ( 1952 – May 22, 2022) was a Navajo educator and author of the first textbook adopted by the U.S. public education system to teach the Navajo language. Life Yazzie received a Master of Arts degree in Bilingual Multi ...

, on the book ''Diné Bizaad Bináhoo'aah: Rediscovering the Navajo Language'', which is now used as the official state textbook for the Navajo language in New Mexico. In 2011, she was recognized as a Spotlight Scholar for her over 20 years of work in preserving North American native languages.

Key publications

(2007) Yazzie, Evangeline Parsons, Jessie Ruffenach, Margaret Speas, and Berlyn Yazzie. ''Diné Bizaad Bináhoo'aah''. Salina Bookshelf, 2007. (2004) Speas, Margaret. "Evidentiality, logophoricity and the syntactic representation of pragmatic features." ''Lingua'' 114.3: 255-276. (2003) Speas, Peggy, and Carol Tenny. "Configurational properties of point of view roles." ''Asymmetry in grammar'' 1: 315-345. (1994) Speas, Peggy. "Null arguments in a theory of economy of projection." (1990) Speas, Margaret. ''Phrase structure in natural language''. Vol. 21. Springer Science & Business Media, 1990. (1986) Speas, Margaret Jean. ''Adjunctions and projections in syntax''. Dissertation. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Speas, Margaret University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni Syntacticians American women linguists Linguists of Navajo 20th-century American linguists 21st-century linguists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people