Surveys

• English dialect survey

• maps of results

• Pig Latin survey

• shm-reduplication survey

• shm survey pt. 2

• light and dark l

• linguistic and cultural boundaries in the central Midwest

• spendthrift=?

• Harvard lingo

• cash machine terms

Dialect materials

• TREDS (recordings of English dialects)

Personal

• CV

• newspaper articles

• pictures

• my band

Bert is currently Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. He previously taught for ten years at Harvard, where he created and taught two of the ten largest courses in the university and was selected as one of its ten best professors for each of his last six years. Specializing in phonological theory, dialectology, field methodology, and languages of the Caucasus, his most recent large-scale project is the Harvard Survey of North American Dialects. He is also Editor of the book series Oxford Surveys in Generative Phonology and the journal Annual of Armenian Linguistics.

Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
893 Curtin Hall
3243 Downer Avenue
Milwaukee, WI 53211

414-229-3068

vaux@uwm.edu

Professional History

• Professor of Foreign Languages and Linguistics, University of Wisconsin, 2003-

• Asst. and Assoc. Professor of Linguistics, Harvard University, 1994-2003 (view audience video from my last lecture, 5-2003)

• PhD, Harvard University, 1994

Recent radio interviews [click on links to listen]

• “At Ten” with Jane Hampden, WUWM (NPR affiliate, Milwaukee, WI), 5-7-04

• “Milwaukee Ideas” with Tom Luljak, WUWM (NPR affiliate, Milwaukee, WI), 6-29-04

• Stateside with Charity Nebbe, NPR, 7-9-2004

Recent newspaper coverage 

• Standing on line at the bubbler with a hoagie in my hand: Bert Vaux maps America's dialects (Harvard Gazette, 12-12-2002) 

• Regionally speaking (Science, 11-8-2002)

• Merry, marry, Mary (New York Times, 10-10-2002)

• Sub basics (New Haven Advocate, 9-8-2005)

• In the South, a 'coke' could be a Pepsi (Atlanta Journal Constitution, 1-27-05)

• Say what? Harvard professor maps speech patterns (Seattle Times)

• The Armenian Language and Armenian Studies: An Interview With Linguistics Professor Bert Vaux (The Armenian Weekly, July 2003)

• Dialectal materialism: Jabber and Babel (Harvard Magazine, March-April 2003)

Selected Publications

• The Phonology of Armenian.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

• Introduction to Linguistic Field Methods. Munich: Lincom Europa, 1999.

• "Syllabification in Armenian, Universal Grammar, and the Lexicon," Linguistic Inquiry 34.1, 2003.

• "Feature Spreading and the Representation of Place of Articulation," Linguistic Inquiry 31, 2000. 

• "The Laryngeal Specifications of Fricatives," Linguistic Inquiry 29.3, 1998. 

• "The Status of ATR in Feature Geometry," Linguistic Inquiry 27, 1996.