hunter johnson
linguistics PhD candidate @ UCLA
Department of Linguistics University of California, Los Angeles
hunterjohnson at ucla dot edu
cv
you may access my CV here.
research interests
my research interests are primarily in theoretical syntax and fieldwork.
syntactic theory
in terms of syntactic theory, I’m most interested in studying hierarchy effects like direct/inverse agreement, direct/inverse marking, the PCC, etc.. These phenomena are interesting because they reveal a lot about how specifically the Agree operation works and what role Agree plays in the grammar. A lot of my work is on Guarani (my fieldwork language) which has: i) direct/inverse agreement, ii) portmanteau agreement in 1>2, iii) and active/stative agreement split in intransitives, and iv) a person restriction in causative constructions with three arguments. I have also been looking into hierarchy effects of other languages of the Americas like Quechua, Mapundungun, Nivaclé (Mataguayo), and many others. Beyond Agree and hierarchy effects, I have been looking at clausal embedding, relative clauses, Tense, and quantifiers in Guarani.
fieldwork
in terms of fieldwork, my main focus is on Guarani. I mostly work in the towns of Coronel Oviedo and Caaguazú and have done multiple in-situ fieldtrips. When I’m not in Paraguay I meet with a few speakers over Zoom. In the past, I have done fieldwork on Mille Lacs Ojibwe (Minnesota) and Cantel K’iche’ (Guatemala). I have not worked on these languages directly for a while but still love keeping up with Algonquian and Mayan linguistics. This summer, I also plan on doing fieldwork on the Nivaclé language spoken in northern Paraguay (Filadelfia).
publications
(under review) Johnson, Hunter. Probe relaxation and direct/inverse, portmanteau, and active/stative agreement in Guarani. [paper]
(to appear) Johnson, Hunter. Diagnosing unaccusativity in Guarani. In Proceedings of the 27th Workshop on Structure and Constituency in Languages of the Americas (WSCLA 27). [paper]
(to appear) Johnson, Hunter. The Guarani inverse as double agree. In Proceedings of the 41st West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 41). [paper]
(to appear) Johnson, Hunter. Optional inverse agreement in Guarani ditransitives. In Proceedings of the 26th Workshop on Structure and Constituency in Languages of the Americas (WSCLA 26). [paper]
2024 Johnson, Hunter and Hammerly, Christopher. Deverbal noun formation in Mille Lacs Ojibwe. In Papers of the 53rd Algonquian Conference (PAC 53). [pre-publication version]
2023 Jun, Sun-Ah, Jian-Leat Siah, Marisabel Cabrera & Hunter Johnson. Realizations of the tritonal pitch accent in Paraguayan Guarani. In Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. [pre-publication version]
2021 Johnson, Hunter. Noun Composition in Ojibwe, University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy. [paper] [link]
presentations
conference presentations
2024 Johnson, Hunter and Marisabel Cabrera. Wh-question formation strategies in Guarani SSILA 2024. NYC, NY. [handout]
2024 Johnson, Hunter. Relative clause formation in Guarani SSILA 2024. NYC, NY. [handout]
2023 Johnson, Hunter. Unaccusativites and the active/stative split in Guarani SCAMS (III) 2023. Pomona College, CA. [handout]
2023 Johnson, Hunter. The Guarani inverse as double agree WCCFL 2023. UCSC. Santa Cruz, CA. [handout]
2023 Johnson, Hunter. Feature Gluttony in the Guarani inverse WSCLA 2023. McGill University, Montreal CA. [handout]
2021 Johnson, Hunter. and Hammerly, Christopher. Deverbal noun formation in Mille Lacs Ojibwe. 53rd Algonquian Conference. Carelton College, CA. [slides][video]
poster presentations
2024 Johnson, Hunter. Unaccusativity in Guarani and the active/stative split. WSCLA 2024. University of Toronto, Toronto, CA. [poster][supplement]
2023 Jun, Sun-Ah, Jian-Leat Siah, Marisabel Cabrera & Hunter Johnson. Realizations of the tritonal pitch accent in Paraguayan Guarani. 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Prague, Czech Republic. [poster]
2021 Johnson, Hunter. Motivating a Nominal Licensing Account of Differential Object Marking in Guaraní. Minnesota Undergraduate Linguistics Symposium (MULS). [poster]
2021 Johnson, Hunter. A nominal licensing account of Differential Object Marking in Guaraní. University of Minnesota Linguistics Department Colloquium.