Jessica Kantarovich | University of Chicago

My Research

I am currently a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Linguistics Department at the University of Chicago, funded by the NSF project "Documenting Contact, Cognition, and Change in Northeastern Siberia" (BCS-1761551). I specialize in language contact, change, and variation, with a particular focus on language ecologies of the Arctic and language endangerment and shift in Siberia. Since 2022, I have also been conducting fieldwork on Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic) in Greenland.

I received my PhD from the University of Chicago in 2020, with a dissertation on ongoing morphosyntactic change in Chukchi. My overarching research interest is developing a typology of languages in situations of unstable multilingualism and shift, including endangered languages, heritage languages, and contact varieties. My work integrates approaches from contact linguistics, sociolinguistics, experimental psycholinguistics, and formal syntactic theory.

Languages I have worked on include: Chukchi, Yupik, Even, and Sakha in Siberia; heritage Lithuanian in Chicago; and heritage contact varieties of Russian (Russian in Alaska and Ukraine). I am also passionate about understanding the unique challenges faced by Arctic peoples in the preservation of their languages and cultures.

My work has been funded by the National Science Foundation (BCS-1761551), a Russian Mega-grant (2020-220-08-6030), the Mellon Foundation, and the University of Chicago Humanities Division.

Updates

March 2023: My invited chapter on sociolinguistic change in Chukotka has just been published as part of Siberian World, available here and also on my Publications page.

January 2023: I recently guest edited an issue of the journal Sibirica with Marina Kysylbaikova. The issue is devoted entirely to the cultures and languages of northeastern Siberia, and all of the article contributors are themselves Indigenous Siberians. I hope you'll check it out as an opportunity to see how Indigenous scholars think about their communities: Sibirica 21.3.

December 2022: My book with Lenore Grenoble, Reconstructing non-standard languages: A socially-anchored approach, is now available.

October 14, 2022: I will be presenting at a workshop on language and culture contact in North-eastern Siberia, hosted by Uni Münster. A zoom link is available for remote attendees!

September 2022: My paper in the International Journal of Bilingualism is finally available online.