Whamit!

The Weekly Newsletter of MIT Linguistics

Notes from the field: Jessica in Mexico

Jessica Coon is spending the fall semester in Chiapas, Mexico, continuing her work on Chol (Mayan) with support from an NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant. Jessica and her husband are living in San Cristóbal de las Casas, where she is a visiting scholar at CIESAS-Sureste, a Mexican language and culture research institution. CIESAS offers a master’s degree in Mesoamerian Linguistics, which is designed to train native speakers to document and analyze their languages. Currently the program includes speakers of Chol, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Zapotec, Zoque, and Nahuatl. Jessica will be helping out in the morphosyntax class during the week, and will spend most weekends in a Chol-speaking village, collecting data. She sends saludos to the department, and looks forward to seeing everyone in the spring.