Raina Heaton

Ph.D.   Linguistics, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
M.A.    Linguistics, Tulane University
B.S.     Linguistics, Tulane University

I am a linguist interested in documenting and describing endangered and under-resourced languages, and I work with language communities on projects related to language research and language revitalization. I also manage the Native American Languages collection, where we are currently working to make language materials available digitally. My linguistic work has focused on morphosyntactic typology and rarer syntactic phenomena, particularly the structure and function of antipassives and their relationship to ergativity. My fieldwork to date has centered on the Indigenous languages of the Americas, mainly Mayan languages and Enlhet-Enenlhet languages. I have also been a linguist for Kuhpani Yoyani Luhchi Yoroni (Tunica Language Project) to revitalize Tunica, an awakening language of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana, since 2010. Additionally, I head a collaborative documentation project for Enenlhet, a language of the Central Chaco (Paraguay), and am working on a grammar and dictionary for this language. Since coming to Oklahoma, I have collaborated with language practitioners from tribes all over the state to make use of existing archival materials in their programs, and also to record new material which will benefit future generations of language learners. I am very proud of my students have done novel work in Oklahoma relating to (among other things) language acquisition, linguistic repositories, lexicography, and fieldwork ethics.

• Language documentation
• Archival preservation
• Digital returns/repatriation
  
• Enlhet-Enenlhet languages
• Language conservation and revitalization
• Language endangerment
• Morphosyntax
• Typology
• Language variation and change
• Language acquisition
• Ergativity
• Mayan languages and linguistics
• Language isolates of the southeastern US

NAS 4970/5970: Introduction to Language Documentation and Revitalization

NAS 4970/5970: Methods of Language Documentation  

NAS 4970/5970: Survey of Native American Languages

NAS 4970/5970: Language acquisition for Revitalization

NAS 3013: Native American Studies Internship

NAS 5920: Native American Studies Practicum

NAS 3990/4990  Independent Study (Native American Languages Collection)

Director of the Oklahoma Native American Youth Language Fair, 2018 - present

2020 Heaton, Raina. Antipassives in cross-linguistic perspective. Annual Review of Linguistics 6:131-153

Heaton, Raina. Intransitiving morphology. Language and Linguistic Compass 12(2):1-25.

Heaton, Raina and Igor Xoyón. Collaborative research and assessment in Kaqchikel. In Perspectives on Language and Linguistics: Community-Based Research, ed. by Shannon Bischoff and Carmen Jany, 171-185. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Heaton, Raina and Bryn Hauk. Triage: Setting priorities for endangered language research. In Cataloguing the Endangered Languages of the World, ed. by Lyle Campbell and Anna Belew.

Heaton, Raina and Sean Simpson. How the Catalogue of Endangered Languages serves communities whose languages are at risk. In Cataloguing the Endangered Languages of the World, ed. by Lyle Campbell and Anna Belew.

Heaton, Raina. Regional overview: Near East and Central Asia. In Cataloguing the Endangered Languages of the World, ed. by Lyle Campbell and Anna Belew.

Heaton, Raina. Language isolates of Mesoamerica and Northern Mexico. In Language Isolates, ed. by Lyle Campbell, 229-259. London: Routledge.

Heaton, Raina. Intransitiving morphology. Language and Linguistic Compass 12(2):1-25.

Heaton, Raina. Active-stative agreement in Tunica. Anthropological Linguistics 58(3):299-326.

Heaton, Raina and Patricia Anderson. When animals become humans: Grammatical gender in Tunica. International Journal of American Linguistics 83(2):341-363.

Maxwell, Judith, Patricia Anderson and Raina Heaton. Tunica language reawakening. The Tunica-Biloxi Tribe: Its People & Culture, 2nd edition, 45-48.

Heaton, Raina and Igor Xoyón. Assessing language acquisition in the Kaqchikel program at Nimaläj Kaqchikel Amaq’. Language Documentation & Conservation 10:497-521.

Heaton, Raina. Variation and change: the case of movement verbs in Kaqchikel. International Journal of American Linguistics 82(3):317-352.

Heaton, Raina, Kamil Deen and William O’Grady. An investigation of relativization in Kaqchikel Maya. Lingua 170:35-46.

NEH Foundations Grant (NAL collection digital development)

Junior Faculty Fellowship (2019 and 2020, Enenlhet research)

The Native American Languages Collection: Infrastructure and Stewardship (from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Museums for America) Planning preservation and access for the Native American Languages Collection (National Endowment for the Humanities Foundations Grant)

Heaton, Raina and Andrew Abdalian. Tunica language evolution: From 1880 to 2020. Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA). New Orleans, LA

Heaton, Raina. Assessing the input: Teacher speech in a Kaqchikel immersion school. The 6th International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC).  Honolulu, HI.

Heaton, Raina and Manolo Romero. Rasgos de una lingüística colaborativa: Lecciones de las Américas. Asunción, Paraguay. 

Carpenter, Brian, Raina Heaton and Siri Tuttle. Access and Collaborative Opportunities at Three Archives of Native American Languages. Plentary presentation at CoLang 2018. Gainesville, FL. 

Heaton, Raina. Antipassives in cross-linguistic perspective. The 92^nd annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA). Salt Lake City, UT.

Heaton, Raina. Variation and change in the distribution of *-(V)n and *-(V)w in Kaqchikel. Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA). Salt Lake City, UT.

Heaton, Raina. A featural description of antipassive-type structures. The 12th conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT). Canberra, Australia.

Heaton, Raina. Towards a unified account of variability in Kaqchikel focus constructions. Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA). Austin, TX.

Heaton, Raina. Multiple antipassives, with special reference to Mayan. The 49th annual meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europeae (SLE). Naples, Italy.

Heaton, Raina and Q’aq’awitz (Igor) Xoyón. Collaborative research and assessment in Kaqchikel. The 90thmeeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA). Washington DC. (poster presentation).

Heaton, Raina. How many ‘antipassives’ are there? Towards a functional typology of antipassive-type constructions in Kaqchikel. Society for the    Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA).Washington DC.

Heaton, Raina and Judith Maxwell. A reevaluation of the perfect in Kaqchikel.  Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA). Washington DC.

• Tunica Language Project
• Enenlhet Documentation Project
• Online access for the Native American Languages collection
• Comparative Language Input Project
• Antipassives in Kaqchikel

Enenlhet Documentation. Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America

The Kaqchikel Collection of Raina Heaton. Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America