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Lewis C. (Chad) Howe

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Professor

My primary area of research is language variation and change, focusing on structural phenomena in the Romance Languages. More generally, I investigate the forces that shape language use and the subsequent effect that these forces have on how language evolves. Starting with my doctoral dissertation, Cross-dialectal features of the Spanish Present Perfect: A Typological Analysis of Form and Function (Ohio State, 2006), I have focused on the dichotomy between forms of past reference (i.e. periphrastic vs. simple past) in Romance Languages, a widely discussed topic that had nonetheless received sparse attention in the literature on structural and semantic (i.e. meaning) change. Considered in the aggregate, my work in this area has argued for a revised view of periphrastic past constructions that takes into account the behavior and evolution of these forms in and outside of the Romance family. Building on my original fieldwork conducted in Spain and Peru, I have continued to explore the broader implications of my claims, especially their potential to inform general theories concerning the nature of linguistic change.

Education:

Georgia Southern University, BA (1999)

The Ohio State University, MA (2001)

The Ohio State University, PhD (2006)

Specific Research Areas:

Some Current Projects:

  1. Grammaticalization and language change in Romance Languages
  2. Language variation and change in social media
  3. Incipient Language Shift in a Southern Latino Community
  4. Indigenous Languages in Latin America: Contact, Shift, and Maintenance
Articles Featuring Lewis C. (Chad) Howe

This past summer, Linguistics faculty and students represented UGA at several conferences. We are excited about all of the phenomenal research taking place in the department, and we would like to take the opportunity to recognize some of the projects that…

Want to learn more about corpus linguistics? The Linguistics Department will be holding a pair of virtual workshops to introduce participants to basic corpus tools available to everyone at UGA.

Friday, September 17th, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM: Introduction to…

Dr. Chad Howe will be offering a Special Topics course during Maymester 2020 – “The Digital Life of Language” LING 4910 & ROML 4120/6120! This course is one of many approved courses for the 

Collections of speech and text, known as corpora, have long played a key role in linguistics. Now with the help of a Learning Technologies Grant [from UGA's Center for Teaching and Learning], UGA linguists have access to an…

The Linguistics Department is proud to announce that two CURO students will be working with our faculty this fall.

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