P. Speas
Recent Publications

Kalsang, Jay Garfield, Margaret Speas and Jill deVilliers. "Direct Evidentials, Case, Tense and Aspect in Tibetan." 2013. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 31.2 517-561

“Language Ownership and Language Ideologies.” 2013. Negotiating Culture:  Heritage, Ownership and Intellectual Property.  University of Massachusetts Press.

 “Evidentials as Generalized Functional Heads.” 2010. in A.M. diScuillo, ed. Interface Legibility at the Edge. Oxford University Press.

de Villiers, J., J Garfield, H Gernet-Girard, T Roeper, M Speas. 2009. ‘Evidentials in Tibetan: Acquisition, Semantics and Cognitive Development’ in Fitneva, Stanka. Papers on the Acquisition of Evidentiality.

‘On the Syntax and Semantics of Evidentials.’ 2008. Language and Linguistics Compass. Volume 2 Issue 5, pp. 940 – 965.

Parsons-Yazzie, Evangeline and Margaret Speas. 2008.Diné Bizaad Bínahoo’aah (Rediscovering the Navajo Language)  Salina Bookshelf, Flagstaff AZ.

Davis, Chris, Chris Potts and Peggy Speas. 2008. ‘The Pragmatic Values of Evidential Sentences.’  SALT.

“Someone Else’s Language:  Linguists and Language Revitalization”
2008. Rehner, Jon and Louise Lockard, eds Indigenous Language revitalization: Encouragement, Guidance and Lessons Learned. Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University Press. 19 pp.

Speas,  Margaret, Helen Antonio, Kellymay Kelly, Lorene Legah, Lena McCabe, Ellavina Tsosie Perkins, Cecile Silentman Carr, Irene Silentman, and Roseann Willink, “Navajo Spatial Terms Made Easier”, ms. 2008. Navajo Language Academy.

“Review of A. Aikhenvald:  Evidentiality.” 2008. Lingua. vol. 118, Issue 5. 754-759.

 “Evidential Paradigms, World Variables and Person Agreement Features”  The Italian Journal of Linguistics, 16.1, 2004. ed. by K. Safir and V. Bianchi.

 “Evidentiality, Logophoricity and the Syntactic Representation of Pragmatic Features.” 2004. Lingua 14.3, pp. 255-276.


“Constraints On Null Pronouns” 2001 in Legendre, Vikner and Grimshaw, eds., Optimality-Theoretic Syntax MIT Press, Cambridge. Proceedings of the Hopkins Optimality Workshop, Geraldine Legendre, ed. MIT Press.

"From Rules to Principles in the Study of Navajo Syntax" 2001. Fernald and Platero, eds., Studies in Navajo Syntax and Semantics. MITWPL, Cambridge MA.

“Projection and Pronominal Arguments" 2000. Lexical Specification and Insertion, P. Coopmans, M. Everaert and J. Grimshaw, eds, Blackwell Pubs. 349-378.

“Person and Point of View in Navajo” 2000. Eloise Jelinek, ed., WCCFL Papers in Honor of Ken Hale, MIT Press, Cambridge.

'Optimality Theory and Syntax:  Null Pronouns and Control' 1997 in Archangeli and Langendoen, eds., Optimality Theory, Blackwell Publishers.

'Null Objects in Functional Projections' 1996,  in Zaring and Rooryck, eds., Phrase Structure and the Lexicon,  University of Chicago Press.

'Quantification and the Position of NPs in Navajo' (with E. Parsons Yazzie) 1996, in E. Jelinek and L. Saxon, eds, Athapaskan Syntax, Benjamins.

'Economy, Agreement and the Representation of Null Arguments'  1994.  ms.

 'Null Arguments in a Theory of Economy of Projection', 1994, UMass Occasional Papers in Linguistics, E. Benedicto and J. Runner, eds.

Phrase Structure in Natural Language, 1990, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrect. (288 pp.)

Unpublished ms:  Economy, Agreement and the Representation of Null Arguments  (1995) [download PDF version]