‘Phoneme fluctuation’: Empirical and theoretical limitations
The squib examines the notion of ‘phoneme fluctuation’, used in the SIL tradition of documentation, highlighting a number of empirical and theoretical problems, and arguing for …
About me
I have been a member of The University of Edinburgh’s Linguistics and English Language Department since 2014, first as a postoctoral fellow and, as of April 2021, as Lecturer.
My research is mostly within the scope of the Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics (AMC), which I serve as Depute Director to. I work on the historical phonology and morphology of Mapudungun, the ancestral language of the Mapuche people the American Southern Cone, as well as on the early sounds and spellings of the Scots language. I also have an interest in the languages of the Americas more broadly and their contribution to linguistic diversity and linguistic theory.
Originally from Santiago, Chile, I began my work life as a secondary-school Philosophy and English teacher, both on the southern island of Chiloé, and in New York City state schools. At times, I’ve also worked in adult education and HR consultancy in Santiago and as a freelance pronunciations editor for the Oxford English Dictionary.
Education
DPhil in Linguistics and Philology
The University of Oxford
MPhil in Linguistics and Philology
The University of Oxford
Education MSc (TESOL)
City College of New York
Interests
Historical Phonology & Morphology
Mapudungun
Languages of the Americas
Older Scots
Missionary grammars
Digital humanities
Research Grants
In 2025, I was awarded a Leverhulme Research Project Grant for a four-year project entitled “Texts, typology, and language history in the Southern Cone: A digital framework” which will bring together a team of eight researchers across Chile, Argentina and Scotland to work on the textual record of languages of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. The main outcome will be the Comparative Historical Corpus of the Southern Cone (CHiCo-SC).
Between 2018 and 2021 I held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship entitled “Digital methods in New-World language change: Words & sounds in older Mapudungun”. The project allowed me to build and mine the first stages of the Corpus of Historical Mapudungun. I am also a member of the From Inglis to Scots (FITS) project, which is charged with creating a corpus of grapho-phonological correspondences for some of the earliest Scots documents.
Featured Publications
Affective coronal alternations in Mapudungun: Sound symbolism, change and morpho-phonological structure
The paper examines a series of coronal consonantal alternations in Mapudungun. Palatalisations imply small size, tenderness, closeness and politeness (e.g.[naʐki] 'cat'→[ɲaʃki] …
A reassessment of word prominence in Mapudungun: Phonological vs. morphological activation
An account of Mapudungun stress assignment which highlight's the role of stress-based morphological demarcation in the language's complex word structure
The dental-alveolar contrast in Mapudungun: Loss, preservation and extension
The historical roots of the dental-alveolar contrast in Mapudungun are surveyed, alongside the tendency for their merger under asymmetric contact conditions.
Kuyfike awkiñ dungu / The echo of ancient voices: texts form Mapuche spoken tradition compiled in the late 19th century
In Spanish: Ecos de voces antiguas: Textos de la tradición oral mapuche recopilados a fines del siglo XIX
Phonotactics, graphotactics and contrast: The history of Scots dental fricative spellings
A re-assessment of the history of ⟨þ⟩, ⟨ð⟩, ⟨y⟩ and ⟨th⟩ in Older Scots
Further Publications
(2023).
The Corpus of Historical Mapudungun: Morpho-phonological parsing and the history of a Native American language.
In Corpora.
(2023).
A grapho-phonologically parsed corpus of medieval Scots: Variation across time.
In Corpora.
(2022).
English Historical Linguistics: Historical English in contact.
Published by John Benjamins.
(2021).
El *Sermón en Lengua de Chile* en el Corpus Histórico del Mapudungun: De texto colonial a texto digital [The *Sermon in the language of Chile* in the Corpus of Historical Mapudungun: from colonial text to digital text].
In Lenguas y Literaturas Indoamericanas.
(2020).
Visualising pre-standard spelling practice: Understanding the interchange of ⟨ch(t)⟩ and ⟨th(t)⟩ in Older Scots.
In JDMDH.
(2019).
Charting the rise and demise of a phonotactically motivated change in Scots.
In Folia Linguistica Historica.
(2019).
Early spelling evidence for Scots L-vocalisation: a corpus-based approach.
In Historical Dialectology in the Digital Age.
(2018).
Pertinacity and change in Mapudungun stress assignment.
In IJAL.
(2018).
Towards a grapho-phonologically parsed corpus of medieval Scots: Database design and technical solutions.
In Corpora.
(2017).
The diachrony of Mapudungun stress assignment.
In PiHPh.
(2017).
The emergence of Scots: Clues from Germanic *a reflexes.
In proceedings of FRLSU.
(2017).
Native and Non-native Perception of Stress in Mapudungun: Assessing Structural Maintenance in the Phonology of an Endangered Language.
In LAS.
(2016).
'Fake' gemination in suffixed words and compounds in English and German.
In JASA.
(2016).
The validity of Augusta’s *Diccionario Araucano* one hundred years after its publication.
In Boletín de Filología.
Recent & Upcoming Talks
Texts, typology and history; Digital methods and the languages of the Southern Cone
The morpho-phonology of affect; Mapudungun kinship terms then and now
A grapho-phonological history of the 'sixth vowel' in Mapudungun — Epenthesis, stress and rule inversion
Vowels in 19th and 20th-century Yahgan — Bridges across time and scripts
Loanword adaptation in nineteenth-century Yahgan — Bridges between Bristol and Tierra del Fuego
Research areas
Heritage texts, typology and human history in the Southern Cone
I am the Principal Investigator on a 4-year Leverhulme research grant using corpus methods to look into the typology and historical linguistics of the Southern Cone.
Mapudungun phonology and morphology
One of my main focuses is the morphological and phonological structure of Mapudungun, a polysynthetic and agglutinating isolate spoken in the Southern Cone.
Native American Philology
In 2021, I launched the first version of the Corpus of Historical Mapudungun (CHM), which uses text-based approaches to reconstruct the 400-year history of this language.
Sound and spelling variation in Older Scots
I am a team-member in the AHRC-funded From Inglis to Scots (FITS) project project, mapping sounds to spellings in the earliest records for Scots.