Stuart McGill
BA (Oxon), MA (Reading), PhD (SOAS)
Overview
Department of Linguistics
(Researcher in Language Documentation)
Discourse pragmatics, noun class/gender systems and agreement, language documentation and description, technology and language documentation, typology, phonology, Cicipu language (Kainji, Nigeria), Kainji languages, Benue-Congo languagesContact Details
- Name:
- Stuart McGill
- Email address:
- sm112@soas.ac.uk
- Telephone:
- 020 7898 4536
- Address:
- School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG - Building:
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Office No:
- 4404
Teaching
In 2009/2010 I am teaching Discourse Structure from Grammar to Text (Term 1).
Research
As a researcher in Language Documentation at the Endangered Languages Academic Programme, I am especially interested in the documentation and description of the Kainji languages spoken in northwest Nigeria. These are a mix of endangered and relatively robust (and large) languages, which have nonetheless been largely neglected by linguists.
Within the Kainji group I am particularly interested in the Cicipu language. During my PhD research I spent nine months in Acipuland, and this led to my dissertation on the Cicipu alternation between Gender and Person agreement on verbs and other targets. In particular my thesis demonstrated the role that discourse topicality has to play in the distribution of the two paradigms of agreement.
My research interests lie mainly in the interaction between discourse and grammar, although I am also interested in typology, technology and language documentation, and phonology. I am currently investigating agreement across a number of West Kainji languages, and plan to carry out further language documentation and description on Cicipu as well as some of the smaller languages in the group.
Publications
Authored Books
McGill, Stuart and Fembeti, Samuel and Toupin, Mike (1999) A grammar of Sisaala-Pasaale. Legon: University of Ghana.
Chapters in Books
Raymond, Mary and Salffner, Sophie and McGill, Stuart (2007) 'Field linguistics.' In: Urua, Eno-Abasi and Udoh, Imelda Icheji, (eds.), Handbook of contemporary linguistics. Uyo: Department of Linguistics and Nigerian Languages, Uyo University.
Articles
McGill, Stuart (2009) 'Documenting grammatical tone using Toolbox: an evaluation of Buseman's interlinearisation technique.' Language Documentation and Description, 6 . pp. 236-250.
McGill, Stuart (2007) 'The Cicipu noun class system.' Journal of West African Languages, 34 (2). pp. 51-90.
McGill, Stuart (2005) 'Sentence connectives and deictic shift in Paasaal narrative.' Reading Working Papers in Linguistics, 8 . pp. 119-147.
Theses
McGill, Stuart (2009) Gender and person agreement in Cicipu discourse. PhD thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies.
Other
McGill, Stuart (2009) The genetic classification of Cicipu. Cicipu.org. (Unpublished)
