Jeffrey P. Williams , Ph.D. Professor - Ethnology

Areas of Specialization

Linguistics (morphology, expressivity), anthropological linguistics (language contact, endangerment), Papuan languages, languages of Mainland Southeast Asia, Frisian (Germanic), Catalan.

Current Research Interests

Expressivity and expressives, Frisian expressivity, theory of echo word morphology.

Education

Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin, 1987

More Info

I joined the university in 2006 as Chair of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Social Work.  Prior to coming to TTU, I'd held appointments at the University of Sydney, Vanderbilt University, and Cleveland State University, where I had served as department chair for ten years.  I transitioned to the Office of the Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences where I served as Associate Dean of Finance and later as Interim Dean.  I currently enjoy holding a purely faculty appointment where I can teach, engage in research, and pursue service to the disciplines of anthropology and linguistics as well to larger, allied constituents.  

My fieldwork has been in several countries, mostly in the West Indies and in Papua New Guinea.  I've worked with the descendants of early European colonization in the West Indies since the early 1980s and published articles and book chapters on the sociolinguistic history of Euro-West Indian English -- a set of koínéized varieties that developed out of early identity formation among indentured servants and others who were transported to the region in the middle of the seventeenth century.

In Papua New Guinea, I worked in the upper Sepik River basin near the confluence of the Karawari and Arafundi Rivers.  I have documented theindigenous trade languages of that area, and still have more documentation to complete.  I have also been interested in the Arafundian languages -- a small grouping within the larger conglomerate of Papuan languages spoken on the island.  

I have been one of four co-editors of two volumes published by Cambridge University Press on the lesser-known varieties of English. The first volume appeared in 2010, and the second volume appeared in April of 2015.  My first edited book (lead editor was Michael Aceto) was on contact Englishes of the Eastern Caribbean (Contact Englishes of the Eastern Caribbean, John Benjamins, 2003).  

Most recently I have been engaged in research on the 'aesthetic properties of grammar' that are frequently manifested in alliterative reduplication, echo word morphology, expressives, and other such exponents.  I edited a book entitled The Aesthetics of Grammar:  Sound and Meaning in the Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia that appeared in 2013 with Cambridge. In August of 2020, I published another edited volume on expressives in the South Asian linguistic landscape (Routledge 2021).   In 2023 I published an edited volume with Cambridge University Press entitled Expressivity in European languages.  The contributors work in various aspects of grammatical expressivity and the languages covered include German, Scots, Greek, Basque, Italian, Catalan and others.  In the fall of 2025, my edited collection entitled Capturing Expressivity appeared with Oxford University Press. This book covers aspects of doing expressvity research in the field with contributions  by both linguists and anthropologists.  

Jeffrey P. Williams

The Aesthetics of Grammar: Sound and Meaning in the Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia

View

Jeffrey P. Williams

Expressive Morphology in the Languages of South Asia

View

Jeffrey P. Williams

Expressivity in European Languages

view

Jeffrey P. Williams

Capturing Expressivity

view

Presently I have several other projects underway.  I am co-editing a volume with Professor Nils Langer of Europa University in Flensburg, Germany on language endangerment in Europe.  The volume is planned to appear in 2027, published by Brill-De Gruyter in Germany.  I am editing another volume for Brill-Mouton on expressivity in the indigenous languages of the Americas.  That volume should also appear in late 2027.  And lastly, I am writing a monograph entitled “Expressives and the like” for Cambridge University Press.  I hope to complete that monograph by January 2027.  

Curriculum Vitae