Thomas Payne, Ph.D.

Senior Linguistics Consultant

Degrees

  • Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 1985
  • M.A., University of California, Los Angeles, 1979
  • B.A., University of California, Los Angeles, 1976

Current positions

  • Certified Senior Linguistics Consultant, SIL International, 2012–
  • Review Editor, Studies in Language, 2006–
  • Courtesy Research Associate, University of Oregon Department of Linguistics, 1987–

Other professional experience and service

  • SIL International Linguistics Consultant, 2003–2011
  • Training Coordinator for North America and the Caribbean, SIL Americas Area, 2009–2011
  • Chair, Linguistic Society of America, Language in the School Curriculum Committee, 2007–2009
  • Founder and General Co-chair (with Lori Levin), North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad, 2006–2008
  • Chair, University of Oregon Linguistic Olympiad Commission, 1998–2003
  • Academic Director, Oregon Summer Institute of Linguistics, SIL Academic Affairs Training Department, 1989–2003

Professional memberships

  • Linguistic Society of America, 1997–
  • The Association for Linguistic Typology, 1994–
  • The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, 1985–

Language proficiencies

  • English: ILR 5
  • Spanish: ILR 4
  • Russian: ILR 3
  • French: ILR 2

Research interests

  • Descriptive morphosyntax
  • Language typology
  • Pragmatics
  • Discourse analysis
Department of Linguistics
1290 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1290
United States
Publications:

Selected publications

Payne, Thomas E., and Doris L. Payne. 2012. A typological grammar of Panare: A Cariban language of Venezuela. Brill’s Studies in the Indigenous Languages of Latin America 5. Leiden: Brill Publishers.

Payne, Thomas E. 2011. Understanding English grammar: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Payne, Thomas E., and David J. Weber, eds. 2007. Perspectives on grammar writing. Benjamins Current Topics 11. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Payne, Thomas E. 2006. Exploring language structure: A student's guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Payne, Thomas E. 1997. Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Payne, Thomas E. 1995. Object incorporation in Panare. International Journal of American Linguistics 61(3):295–311.

Payne, Thomas E. 1992. The twins stories: Participant coding in Yagua narrative. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Payne, Thomas E. 1991. Medial clauses and interpropositional relations in Panare. Cognitive Linguistics 2(3):247–281.

Other

Jang, Taeho, and Thomas E. Payne. 2012. Dependency and clause combining in Xibe. In Lindsay J. Whaley and Andrej L. Malchukov (eds.), Recent advances in Tungusic linguistics, 229–256. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

Payne, Thomas E., and Taeho Jang. 2012. Topic marking and the construction of narrative in Xibe. In Pirkko Suihkonen, Bernard Comrie, and Valery Solovyev (eds.), Argument structure and grammatical relations: A crosslinguistic typology. Studies in Language Companion Series 126. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Payne, Thomas E., and Ivan Derzhanski. 2010. The Linguistics Olympiads: Academic competitions in linguistics for secondary school students. In Kristin Denham and Anne Lobeck (eds.), Linguistics at school. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Payne, Thomas E. 2009. Toward a balanced formal/functional grammatical description. Invited lecture at the Symposium on Grammar Writing, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. December 8–10, 2009.

Payne, Thomas E. 2007. A grammar as a communicative act. Invited lecture. Department of Language, Linguistics and Philosophy, University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica.

Payne, Thomas E. 1999. A functional typology of inverse constructions. In Ekatarina V. Rakhilina and Yakov G. Testelets (eds), Typology and linguistic theory: From description to explanation, 245–254. Moscow: Languages of Russian Culture.

Payne, Thomas E., and Thomas Laskowske. 1997. Voice in Seko Padang. In Joan Bybee, John Haiman, and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), Essays on language function and language type, 423–436. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Payne, Thomas E. 1994. The pragmatics of voice in a Philippine language: Actor-focus and goal-focus in Cebuano narrative. In Talmy Givón (ed.), Voice and inversion. Typological Studies in Language 28:317–364. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Works by this author in SIL Language & Culture Archives