Philip S. LeSourd
- Associate Professor, Second Language Studies and Anthropology
Education
- Ph.D. in Linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1989
Contact Information
e-mail: plesourd@indiana.edu
office: Student Bldg. 336
phone: (812) 855-4649
Research Interests
Morphological and syntactic theory, comparative Algonquian linguistics, Maliseet-Passamaquoddy
Personal Statement
My research focuses primarily on issues in the structure of languages of the Algonquian family, the most widespread linguistic stock in North America. My specialty within this domain is Maliseet-Passamaquoddy, an Eastern Algonquian language spoken in New Brunswick (Maliseet) and Maine (Passamaquoddy).
I began working with Maliseet and Passamaquoddy speakers in the 1970's when I was hired by the Wabnaki Bilingual Education Program to organize a dictionary project. The small dictionary that grew out of the work of this project was published in 1984 by the Micmac-Maliseet Institute of the University of New Brunswick. A community-based project continues this work today and has developed a computer database that includes nearly 15,000 words.
In the 1980's, my work focused on the phonology of Passamaquoddy. This was the subject of my doctoral dissertation, which presents an analysis of the stress system of the language, together with its intricate system of vocalic syncope. More recently, I have been involved in editing various Maliseet and Passamaquoddy texts, including a corpus of material that was recorded in New Brunswick in 1963 by Karl V. Teeter of Harvard University. The majority of speakers with whom Teeter worked were born before 1900. Thus their narratives, which provide a significant sample of the oral literature of the Maliseet people, reflect an older style of speech, one that employs to the fullest the morphological resources of their polysynthetic language. I have also been working on a series of studies of aspects of the syntax of Maliseet-Passamaquoddy, while occasionally venturing a look at another Eastern Algonquian language, Western Abenaki.
Courses Recently Taught
- ANTH E323 Indians of Indiana
- ANTH L200 Introduction to Language and Culture
- ANTH L320 American Indian Languages
- ANTH L407 Language and Prehistory
- LING L614 Alternative Syntactic Theories
- LING L670 Language Typologies
Publications
Books
LeSourd, Philip S. (2006) Tales from Maliseet Country: The Maliseet Texts of Karl V. Teeter. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
LeSourd, Philip S. (1993) Accent and Syllable Structure in Passamaquoddy. New York: Garland.
Leavitt, Robert M., and David A. Francis, eds. (1984) Kolusuwakonol: Peskotomuhkati-Wolastoqewi Naka Ikolisomani Latuwewakon/Philip S. LeSourd=s English and Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Dictionary. Fredericton, N.B.: Micmac-Maliseet Institute.
Articles
LeSourd, Philip S. (2004) The Internal Structure of the Noun Phrase in Maliseet-Passamaquoddy. In Papers of the Thirty-Fifth Algonquian Conference, edited by H.C. Wolfart. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba.
LeSourd, Philip S. (2003) Reflexes of Proto-Algonquian *wi?la >he, she= in Maliseet-Passamaquoddy. International Journal of American Linguistics 69:357B69, 2003.
LeSourd, Philip S. (2000) The Passamaquoddy “Witchcraft Tales” of Newell S. Francis. Anthropological Linguistics 42:441–98.
LeSourd, Philip S. (1995) Diminutive Verb Forms in Passamaquoddy. International Journal of American Linguistics 61:103B34.
Book chapters
Reintges, Chris H., Philip S. LeSourd, and Sandra Chung. (2006) Movement, Wh-Agreement, and Apparent Wh-in-situ. In Wh-Movement: Moving On, edited by Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng and Norbert Corver. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
LeSourd, Philip S. (2005) Traditions of Koluskap, the Culture Hero. In Algonquian Spirit: Contemporary Translations of the Algonquian Literatures of North America, edited by Brian Swann, 99B111. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
LeSourd, Philip S. (2004) The Legendary Tom Laporte: A Maliseet Tradition. In Voices from Four Directions: Contemporary Translations of the Native Literatures of North America, edited by Brian Swann, 546B60. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
LeSourd, Philip S. (2003) The Noun Substitute in Maliseet-Passamaquoddy. In Essays in Algonquian and Siouan Linguistics in Memory of Frank T. Siebert, Jr., edited by Blair A. Rudes and David C. Costa, 141B63. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.
Ackerman, Farrell, and Philip S. LeSourd. (1997) Toward a Lexical Representation of Phrasal Predicates (with Farrell Ackerman). In Complex Predicates, edited by Alex Alsina, Joan Bresnan, and Peter Sells, 67B106. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI Publications.
