Doctor Hannah Sarvasy

Doctor Hannah Sarvasy

ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow,
MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour & Development

Biography

Hannah Sarvasy (PhD 2015, James Cook) has conducted primary linguistic fieldwork on Nungon (Papuan), Kim and Bom (Atlantic; Sierra Leone), and Tashelhit Berber (Morocco) and ran a pioneering longitudinal study of children’s acquisition of Nungon. Her publications include A Grammar of Nungon: A Papuan Language of Northeast New Guinea (Brill, 2017), Word Hunters: Field Linguists on Fieldwork (John Benjamins, 2018), and numerous articles and book chapters on topics in Nungon grammar, linguistic typology, Bantu syntax, fieldwork methodology, and ethnobiology, as well as Kim and Bom language primers. She taught at UCLA, served as a Research Fellow at the Australian National University, and currently holds an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award for the crosslinguistic study of clause chains from typological, acquisition, and psycholinguistic angles.

This information has been contributed by Doctor Sarvasy.

Qualifications

  • PhD James Cook University

Organisational Unit (School / Division)

  • MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour & Development

Contact

Email: H.Sarvasy@westernsydney.edu.au
Phone: (02) 9772 6264
Mobile:
Location: U.5.36
Westmead

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Teaching

Previous Teaching Areas

  • 401434 Elements of Language: Analysis and Application, 2021

Publications

Books

  • Sarvasy, H. (2021), 'Nungon Narratives by Roslyn Ogate and Fooyu (Finisterre-Huon, Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea)', : Language & Linguistics in Melanesia .
  • Ogate, D., Adam, J., Sarvasy, H., Plaistowe, J. and Sondik, S. (2019), 'Eep Hagim Nungon Maa Dek: An Ethnobotanical Field Guide to the Upper Uruwa Region, Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea', : Western Sydney University 9781741084917.
  • Sarvasy, H. and Forker, D. (2018), 'Word Hunters: Field Linguists on Fieldwork', : John Benjamins Publishing 9789027200273.
  • Sarvasy, H. (2017), 'A Grammar of Nungon: A Papuan Language of Northeast New Guinea', : Brill 9789004337503.

Chapters in Books

  • Sarvasy, H. (2023), 'Verbatim narrative prompting to children in Nungon', Celebrating Indigenous Voice: Legends and Narratives in Languages of the Tropics and Beyond, Walter de Gruyter 9783110789775.
  • Sarvasy, H. (2022), 'Nungon near future tense in child and child-directed Nungon speech : a case study', The Art of Language, Brill 9789004510388.
  • Sarvasy, H. (2019), 'Short, finite and one-sided bridges in Logoori', Bridging Constructions, Language Science Press 9783961101429.
  • Sarvasy, H. and Ogate, E. (2019), 'Early writing in Nungon in Papua New Guinea', Teaching Writing to Children in Indigenous Languages: Instructional Practices from Global Contexts, Routledge 9781138485358.
  • Sarvasy, H. and Forker, D. (2018), 'Word hunters : unsung heroes of linguistics', Word Hunters: Field Linguists on Fieldwork, John Benjamins Publishing 9789027200273.
  • Sarvasy, H. (2018), 'Evidentiality in the languages of New Guinea', The Oxford Handbook of Evidentiality, Oxford University Press 9780198759515.
  • Sarvasy, H. (2017), 'Imperatives and commands in Nungon', Commands: A Cross-Linguistic Typology, Oxford University Press 9780198803225.
  • Sarvasy, H. (2017), 'Quantification in Nungon', Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language. Volume II, Springer 9783319443287.
  • Sarvasy, H. (2016), 'The future in Logoori oral texts', Diversity in African Languages: Selected Papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, Language Science Press 9783946234715.

Journal Articles

  • Sarvasy, H., Morgan, A., Yu, J., Ferreira, V. and Momma, S. (2023), 'Cross-clause planning in Nungon (Papua New Guinea) : eye-tracking evidence', Memory and Cognition, vol 51, no 3 , pp 666 - 680.
  • Milne, A., Smit, E., Sarvasy, H. and Dean, R. (2023), 'Evidence for a universal association of auditory roughness with musical stability', PLoS One, vol 18, no 9 .
  • Sarvasy, H. (2023), 'Early verb production in Nungon', Frontiers in Psychology, vol 14 .
  • Sarvasy, H. (2022), 'Quantifying clause chains in Nungon texts', Studies in Language, vol 46, no 1 , pp 161 - 200.
  • Smit, E., Milne, A., Sarvasy, H. and Dean, R. (2022), 'Emotional responses in Papua New Guinea show negligible evidence for a universal effect of major versus minor music', PLoS One, vol 17, no 6 .
  • Sarvasy, H., Li, W., Elvin, J. and Escudero, P. (2022), 'Vowel acoustics of Nungon child-directed speech, adult dyadic conversation, and foreigner-directed monologues', Frontiers in Psychology, vol 13 .
  • Sarvasy, H. (2021), 'Acquisition of multi-verb predicates in Nungon', First Language, vol 41, no 4 , pp 478 - 503.
  • Kik, A., Adamec, M., Aikhenvald, A., Bajzekova, J., Baro, N., Bowern, C., Colwell, R., Drozd, P., Duda, P., Ibalim, S., Jorge, L., Mogina, J., Ruli, B., Sam, K., Sarvasy, H., Saulei, S., Weiblen, G., Zrzavy, J. and Novotny, V. (2021), 'Language and ethnobiological skills decline precipitously in Papua New Guinea, the world's most linguistically diverse nation', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 118, no 22 .
  • Sarvasy, H. (2021), 'On the acquisition of complex predicates : introduction to the special issue', First Language, vol 41, no 4 , pp 369 - 375.
  • Amha, A., Slotta, J. and Sarvasy, H. (2021), 'Singing the individual : name tunes in Oyda and Yopno', Frontiers in Psychology, vol 12 .
  • Mulak, K., Sarvasy, H., Tuninetti, A. and Escudero, P. (2021), 'Word learning in the field : adapting a laboratory-based task for testing in remote Papua New Guinea', PLoS One, vol 16, no 9 .
  • Sarvasy, H., Elvin, J., Li, W. and Escudero, P. (2020), 'An acoustic phonetic description of Nungon vowels', Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol 147, no 4 .
  • Sarvasy, H. (2020), 'The acquisition of clause chaining in Nungon', Frontiers in Psychology, vol 11 .
  • Sarvasy, H. and Choi, S. (2020), 'Beyond the two-clause sentence : acquisition of clause chaining in six languages', Frontiers in Psychology, vol 11 .
  • Sarvasy, H. and Choi, S. (2020), 'Editorial : acquisition of clause chaining', Frontiers in Psychology, vol 11 .
  • Sarvasy, H. (2019), 'Taboo and secrecy in Nungon speech', The Mouth, vol 4 , pp 20 - 30.
  • Sarvasy, H. (2019), 'The root nominal stage : a case study of early Nungon verbs', Journal of Child Language, vol 46, no 6 , pp 1073 - 1101.
  • Riedel, K., Sarvasy, H. and Demuth, K. (2019), 'The narrative past inflection in Sesotho child and child-directed speech', Frontiers in Communication, vol 4 .
  • Sarvasy, H. (2018), 'Multiple number systems in one language : split number in Nungon', Lingua, vol 201 , pp 57 - 77.
  • Sarvasy, H. (2017), 'Book review: Cecile, Lux. 2013. Le tetserret, langue berbere du Niger. Description phonetique, phonologique et morphologique, dans une perspective comparative', Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, vol 38, no 1 , pp 133 - 137.
  • Sarvasy, H. (2016), 'Warblish : verbal mimicry of birdsong', Journal of Ethnobiology, vol 36, no 4 , pp 765 - 782.
  • Sarvasy, H. (2016), 'Sexless babies, sexed grandparents : Nungon gendered person terms', International Journal of Language and Culture, vol 3, no 1 , pp 115 - 136.
  • Sarvasy, H. (2015), 'Breaking the clause chains : non-canonical medial clauses in Nungon', Studies in Language, vol 39, no 3 , pp 664 - 696.
  • Sarvasy, H. (2015), 'Monolingual fieldwork in and beyond the classroom : the Logooli experience at UCLA', Proceedings from the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, vol 51, no 1 , pp 471 - 484.
  • Sarvasy, H. (2014), 'Non-spatial setting in Nungon', STUF-Language Typology and Universals, vol 67, no 3 , pp 395 - 432.
  • Sarvasy, H. (2014), 'Four Finisterre-Huon languages : an introduction', STUF - Language Typology and Universals, vol 67, no 3 , pp 275 - 295.
  • Sarvasy, H. (2013), 'Across the great divide : how birth-order terms scaled the Saruwaged Mountains in Papua New Guinea', Anthropological Linguistics, vol 55, no 3 , pp 234 - 255.

Conference Papers

  • Sarvasy, H., Elvin, J., Li, W. and Escudero, P. (2019), 'An acoustic analysis of vowels in Nungon child- versus adult-directed speech', International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Vic..
  • Sarvasy, H., Elvin, J., Li, W. and Escudero, P. (2019), 'Vowel acoustics of Nungon, Papua New Guinea', International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Vic..
  • Sarvasy, H. (2015), 'The imperative split and the origin of switch-reference markers in Nungon', Berkeley Linguistics Society. Annual Meeting, Berkeley, Calif..
  • Sarvasy, H. (2013), 'Birth-order term borrowing as evidence for historical interaction patterns in the Saruwaged Mountains of Papua New Guinea', Australian Linguistic Society. Conference, Perth, W.A..

Other Publications

  • 2022, 'PNG Voices: Listening to Australia's Closest Neighbour: Papua New Guinean Perspectives on Australia and the World', Report

Current Projects

Title: Telling the whole story in one sentence: clause chains across languages
Funder:
  • Australian Research Council (ACRG)
Western Researchers: Hannah Sarvasy
Years: 2018-09-17 - 2024-06-30
ID: P00025329

Previous Projects

Title: PNG Voices
Funder:
  • Whitlam Institute
Western Researchers: Hannah Sarvasy
Years: 2020-11-23 - 2021-05-31
ID: P00027012

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