Academic

As an undergraduate, I attended Rutgers University, where I majored in French and Linguistics. My French is a bit rouillé.

I went to graduate school at UMass Amherst. My dissertation is about phonologically-conditioned allomorphy and UR constraints. It was advised by Joe Pater.

After (and during) graduate school, I was a lecturer in the linguistics department at UCLA for two years, teaching phonology, phonetics, and sociolinguistics.

Now, I’m a visiting assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz.

Non-academic

I come from South Jersey, specifically the Jersey Shore, where people say things like “jimmies“, “shoobies“, “hoagies“, and “water ice“.

I’ve written a little something about my variety of English: Brian’s English.

My non-academic interests are all drawn from the set of quaint, old-timey things people like to do in New England: contra dancing, traditional folk music, Sacred Harp singing, knitting and fiber arts.

I also love classical music and music history. My favorite composers don’t really form a natural class, except they’re mostly 20th century and American/French/Russian (sometimes all three, like Stravinsky). Here’s a list of favorites: Debussy, Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Shostakovich. My favorite piece of music is probably the second movement of Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto no. 4, which exists at the intersection of all the musics I love. I also love Bach.