Dr Michael Franjieh

Research Fellow at the Surrey Morphology Group; Sustainability Fellow at the Institute for Sustainability

BA (Hons), MA, PhD (SOAS, University of London)

+44 (0)1483 682856

m.franjieh@surrey.ac.uk

http://www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/people/

33 AD 02

Academic and research departments

Faculty of Arts, Business and Social Sciences, Institute for Sustainability.

About

Biography

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Surrey Morphology Group on the ESRC funded project Optimal Categorisation the origin and nature of gender from a psycholinguistic perspective. I am part of an inter-disciplinary team investigating the emergence of grammatical gender from classifiers in Oceanic languages from a pscyhologinguistic perspective.

Previously, I was an ELDP funded Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Newcastle, Australia where I worked on documenting and describing the endangered language Fanbak, spoken in Vanuatu. I have also lectured courses in linguistics at both the University of Surrey and at SOAS, Unviersity of London, and worked as a Post Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Cardiff.

Areas of specialism

Nominal Categorisation; Morphology; Grammaticalisation; Oceanic languages; Vanuatu languages

My qualifications

2013

PhD: Field Linguistics

SOAS, University of London

2008

MA: Language Documentation and Description

SOAS, University of London

2005

BA (Hons): German, Linguistics and Computer Science

Queen Mary University of London

Affiliations and memberships

Societas Linguistica Europaea

Research

Research interests

I am a linguist specialising in the documentation and description of Oceanic languages with a specific focus on the languages of Vanuatu. I have a wide variety of interests in different areas of linguistics:

psycholinguisitcs
nominal classification
morphology
typology
language diachrony
historical linguistics
Oceanic languages (especially Vanuatu)
language documentation and description
Vernacular literacy development

Research projects

Sustainable Endangered Language Maintenance in the South Pacific (May 2023 - May 2024)

This ESRC IAA-funded project aims to sustain language use within six local communities in the South Pacific, by identifying education needs in schools, training and upskilling teachers, creating literacy materials, and supporting local language consultants to create language documentation techniques.

Optimal Categorisation (Sep. 2018 - Apr. 2023)

Alongside Prof. Greville G. Corbett and Dr. Alexandra Grandison, I am researching the development of nominal classification systems from a diachronic and cognitive perspective.

Publications

Hanel PHP, Roy D, Taylor S, Franjieh M, Heffer C, Tanesini A, Maio GR (2023) Using self-affirmation to increase intellectual humility in debate. Royal Society Open Science. 10: 220958.

Franjieh, M., Grandison, A., Dotte, A-L., and Corbett, G. G. (2022) Implementing Free-listing: Possessive classifiers in Oceanic. Semantic Fieldwork Methods 4(2).

Franjieh, M. (2022) Fanbyak DoReCo dataset. In Seifart, Frank, Ludger Paschen and Matthew Stave (eds.) Language Documentation Reference Corpus (DoReCo) 1.1. Berlin & Lyon: Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft & laboratoire Dynamique Du Langage (UMR5596, CNRS & Université Lyon 2)

Grandison, A., Franjieh M., Greene, L., and Corbett G. G. (2021) Optimal categorisation: the nature of nominal classification systems. Cadernos de Linguística, v. 2, n. 1, p. e393, 3 Dec. 2021.

Franjieh, M., Corbett, G. G. and Grandison, A. (2021) Uncovering variation in classifier assignment in Oceanic. ExLing 2021: Proceedings of 12th International Conference of Experimental Linguistics, 11-13 October 2021, Athens, Greece, 81 - 84.

Franjieh, M (2019) The languages of northern Ambrym, Vanuatu: A guide to the deposited materials in ELAR. Language Documentation & Conservation 13: 83-111.

Franjieh, M (2018) The languages of northern Ambrym, Vanuatu: an archive of linguistic and cultural material from the North Ambrym and Fanbyak languages. London: SOAS, Endangered Languages Archive.

Franjieh, M (2018) North Ambrym possessive classifiers from the perspective of canonical gender. In S. Fedden, J. Audring and G. Corbett (eds.) Non-canonical gender systems. Oxford: OUP.

von Prince, K and Krajinović, A and Krifka, M and Guérin, V and Franjieh, M (2018) Mapping irreality: Storyboards for eliciting TAM contexts. In Proceedings of Linguistic Evidence.

Franjieh, M (2016) Indirect possessive hosts in North Ambrym: Evidence for gender. Oceanic Linguistics 55:87-115.

François A, Lacrampe S, Franjieh M, Schnell S (2015) The languages of Vanuatu: Unity and diversity. Studies in the Languages of Island Melanesia, 5. Canberra: Asia-Pacific Linguistics.

François A, Franjieh M, Lacrampe S, Schnell S (2015) The exceptional linguistic density of Vanuatu. In A. François, S. Lacrampe, M. Franjieh, S. Schnell (eds), The Languagesof Vanuatu: Unity and Diversity. Studies in the Languages of Island Melanesia, 5. Canberra: Asia-Pacific Linguistics. Pp. 1-21.

Franjieh, M (2015) The construct suffix in North Ambrym. In The Languages of Vanuatu: Unity and Diversity, ed. by A. François; S. Lacrampe, M. Franjieh, S. Schnell. Studies in the Languages of Island Melanesia, 5. Canberra: Asia-Pacific Linguistics Open Access. Pp.91-116.

Franjieh, M. (2013) Possessive Classifiers in North Ambrym, A Language of Vanuatu: Explorations in Semantic Classification. PhD thesis, SOAS, University of London.

Franjieh M, von Prince K (2011) Classifying nouns vs. classifying relations: a case study from Ambrym. In Austin, Peter K, Bond, Oliver, Nathan, David and Lutz Marten (eds.) Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation & Linguistic Theory 3. SOAS, University of London.

Corbett, G., Grandison, A., Franjieh, M. (2024) Optimal Categorisation: The Origin and Nature of Gender From a Psycholinguistic Perspective, 2018-2023. [data collection]. UK Data Service. SN: 856652, DOI: 10.5255/UKDA-SN-856652