Richard Compton

Professor, Department of Linguistics, UQAM

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Inuktitut

The Inuit language, or Inuktut, is a dialect continuum spoken in the North American Arctic: in the north of Alaska, the ...

Papers

This pages lists my publications, including articles, chapters in edited volumes, proceedings papers, and books. Arti...

Courses

I give courses in such areas as Field Methods, the Indigenous Languages of North America, the Structure of Inuktitut, as...

About me

I’m a Full Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and hold the Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Knowledge and Transmission of the Inuit Language. My areas of research include syntax and morphology, as well language documentation and revitalization. My work bears on the nature of polysynthesis in the Inuit language, Inuktut, particularly in Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun dialect areas, and includes the study of lexical and functional categories, noun incorporation, verbal agreement, ergativity, and the linearization and formation of words. Some of my research questions include:

  • What grammatical properties differentiate Inuktut dialects across Canada (e.g., Inuktitut versus Inuinnaqtun)?
  • What is the morpho-syntactic status of agreement markers in Inuktut? 
  • What is the internal structure of complex words in Inuktut?
  • Is there evidence for adjectival and adverbial categories in Inuktut?
  • How can challenging grammatical concepts be presented in an accessible way for teachers and learners involved in language revitalization?

I am a member of the Montreal Underdocumented Languages Linguistics Lab (MULL), of the Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music – CRBLM (and its UQAM antenna, the CRLEC), of the Centre interuniversitaire d’études et de recherches autochtones (CIÉRA) (Montréal antenna), the Groupe de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les affirmations autochtones contemporaines (GRIAAC) and an affiliated member of the Institut nordique du Québec. 

I am currently accepting graduate students (MA and PhD) interested in examining the structure of Indigenous languages.

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Contact

Richard Compton
Department of Linguistics
Université du Québec à Montréal
C.P. 8888, Succ. Centre-Ville
Montréal, QC H3C 3P8 Canada

Phone : 514.987.3000, ext. 3192
compton[dot]richard[at]uqam[dot]ca

Education

  • 2014 Postdoctoral Fellowship, McGill University
  • 2012 PhD Linguistics, University of Toronto
  • 2004 MA Linguistics, University of Toronto
  • 2002 BAH Language & Linguistics, Queen’s University

In the Media

Here are a list of media interviews and the relevant links:

Team

Richard Compton, Professor in the Department of Linguistique at UQAM

Abigaël Forest Leblanc, MA student in Linguistics and Research Assistant

Marc-Antoine Paul, MA student in Linguistics and Research Assistant

Émilie Carrier, Undergraduate student in Linguistics and Research Assistant

Joanie Bergeron, Undergraduate student in Linguistics and Research Assistant

Émilie L’Hôte, Undergraduate student in Linguistics and Research Assistant

Jeanne St-Cyr, Undergraduate student in Linguistics and Research Assistant

Marc-Antoine De Henau, Undergraduate student in Linguistics and Research Assistant

Helio Sarrazin-Desjardin, Undergraduate research intern

Nora Villeneuve, MA student in Linguistics

Yoann Léveillé, MA student in Linguistics

Julien Carrier, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow

Calendar

  • November 2024 — Richard Compton gives a guest talk on documenting and describing Inuinnaqtun at the University of Ottawa.
  • November 2024 — William Johnston (FRQSC Postdoctoral fellow) gives a presentation to the Hmong Studies Consortium.
  • September 2024 — William Johnston (PhD McGill) begins an FRQSC Postdoctoral Fellowship, supervised by Richard Compton.
  • September 2024 — Richard Compton gives a guest lecture at Edouard Montpetit college
  • June 2024 — Abigaël Forest-LeBlanc is awarded an FRQSC Master’s scholarship.
  • May 2024 — Julien Carrier begins a tenure-track faculty position in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Kentucky.
  • April 2024 — Abigaël Forest-LeBlanc and Marc-Antoine Paul present posters at WSCLA 27 at the University of Toronto.
  • April 2023 — Richard Compton is a keynote speaker at the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS), University of Chicago.
  • April 2023 — Richard Compton gives a guest lecture at Montmorency college.
  • September 2022 — Yoann Léveillé is awarded a SSHRC Master’s scholarship.
  • October 15, 2022 — Julien Carrier (SSHRC Postdoc) will give a talk on word order in Inuktitut at NWAV 50 at Stanford University.
  • Oct. 2-7, 2022 — Richard Compton gives an intensive course on the structure of inuktitut for Inuit teachers in Ivujivik, Nunavik, as part of a teacher certificate program offered by UQAT and Kativik School Board.
  • July 26, 2022 — New article on Inuktitut pronouns published in the Canadian Journal of Linguistics.
  • June 19-22, 2022 — Nora Villeneuve, Yoann Léveillé, and Richard Compton give talks at the 22nd Inuit Studies Conference at the University of Winnipeg.
  • June 1-4, 2022 — Yoann Léveillé presents a poster on Inuktitut demonstratives at the annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistic Association (CLA) (held online).
  • May 13, 2022 — Richard Compton is promoted to Full Professor.
  • May 2021 — Yoann Léveillé is awarded an FRQSC Master’s scholarship.
  • December 2020 — Alice Tremblay is awarded a SSHRC PhD Scholarship.
  • Novembre 3, 2020 — Richard Compton receives a teaching award from the Faculté des sciences humaines.
  • August 2020 — Marie-Loup Turenne submits her MA thesis entitled «L’ordre des mots dans les phrases déclaratives de l’inuktitut» (Word order in declarative sentences in Inuktitut).
  • July 13, 2019 — Richard Compton is named chair-holder of the Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Knowledge and Transmission of the Inuit Language (SSHRC).
  • July 3, 2019 — Matthew Schuurman defends his doctoral exam on nominalization and relativization.
  • July 1, 2019 — Nora Villeneuve wins the Award for the Best Student Poster (tied) from the Canadian Linguistics Association.
  • June 1-3, 2019 — Matthew Schuurman gives a talk on plosive reduction in Inuktitut at the Canadian Linguistics Association (CLA) at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
  • June 1-3, 2019 — Nora Villeneuve presents a poster on the Inuktitut aspectual maker –liq– at the annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Association (CLA) at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
  • June 1-3, 2019 — Anja Arnhold (U. of Alberta), Emily Elfner (York U.) & Richard Compton give a talk entitled “On the Absence of Stress in Inuktitut” at the annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Association (CLA) at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
  • May 9-11, 2019 — Matthew Schuurman presents at WSCLA 24 at the University of Maryland on coordination markers in Inuktitut.
  • March 27, 2019 — Richard Compton (PI), Heather Igloliorte, Mark K. Watson, Shawn-Renee Hordyk, Sarah L. Fraser, and Looee Okalik receive a SSHRC Connection Grant to organize the 21st Inuit Studies Conference.
  • February 28 – March 3, 2019 — Richard Compton presents at 6th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation (ICLDC), Connecting Communities, Languages & Technology, at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
  • May 30 – June 1, 2018 — Richard Compton gives a talk on person complementarity at the annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Association (CLA), at the University of Regina, in Saskatchewan.
  • May 2018 — Christophe Mauro submits his MA thesis entitled «Le statut de la troisième personne en inuktitut» (The status of the third person in Inuktitut).
  • April 20-22, 2018 — Richard Compton presents a poster at WCCFL 36 at UCLA.
  • April 13-15, 2018 — Richard Compton gives an invited talk at WSCLA 23 at the University of Ottawa.
  • December 1, 2017 — Richard Compton gives an invited talk at the Concordia University.
  • November 27-29, 2017 — Richard Compton gives a talk on the Inuit language at the 12th Langage and Development Conference, organized by the British Council at Dakar, Senegal.
  • November 18-19, 2017 — Richard Compton gives at talk at the MoMOT Morphology Workshop at UQAM.
  • October 27-29, 2017 — Richard Compton presents a poster at the 48th North-East Linguistics Society (NELS), at the University of Iceland, in Reykjavik, Iceland.
  • September 2017 — Matthew Schuurman is awarded a SSHRC Bombardier PhD scholarship.
  • September 22-23, 2017 — Richard Compton gives a talk on person-case constraints (PCC) in Inuktitut at the Manitoba Person Workshop, at the University of Manitoba.
  • July 17 – August 7, 2017 — Marie-Loup Turenne and Alexandra Daigneault conduct fieldwork in Iqaluit, Nunavut.
  • May 27-29, 2017 — Richard Compton gives a talk on «Left-periphery φ-agreement and A-movement in Inuktitut» at the annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Association (ACL-CLA) at Ryerson University, in Toronto.
  • May 27-29, 2017 — Chris Mauro presents a talk on switch reference and language change in Inuktitut at the annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Association (ACL-CLA) at Ryerson University, in Toronto.
  • April 21-23, 2017 — Emily Kudlak and Richard Compton give a talk at the 22nd Workshop on Structure and Constituency in Languages of the Americas (WSCLA), at the University of British Columbia.
  • April 21-23, 2017 — Chris Mauro presents a poster at the 22nd Workshop on Structure and Constituency in Languages of the Americas (WSCLA), at the University of British Columbia.
  • March 14-18, 2017 — Anja Arnhold, Richard Compton, and Emily Elfner present on “XP-sized prosodic words in Inuit” at the 40th Generative Linguistics in the Old Word (GLOW), at the University of Leiden, Netherlands.
  • December 12, 2016 — Marie-Loup Turenne gives a talk on word order in declarative clauses in Inuktitut at the Bilingual Workshop in Theoretical Linguistics (ABLT/BWTL), at Concordia University.
  • November 19, 2016 — Chris Mauro gives a talk on entitled “Personnes et non-personne en Inuktitut” at the 1st annual Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto Morphology Workshop (MoMOT) at Carleton University, in Ottawa.
  • October 7-10, 2016 — Richard Compton, Chris Mauro and Marie-Loup Turenne give presentations at the 20th Congrès d’Études Inuit Studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
  • September 22 – 24 2016 — Richard Compton, Anja Arnhold and Emily Elfner present a talk at The Word and the Morpheme workshop at Humboldt University in Berlin.
  • July 4 – July 18, 2016 — Richard Compton, Chris Mauro, and Marie-Loup Turenne conduct fieldwork in Iqaluit, Nunavut.
  • June 20 – July 1, 2016 — Chris Mauro and Marie-Loup Turenne participate in the Institue on Collaborative Language Research (CoLang 2016) at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
  • May 29, 2016 — Emily Elfner (UBC), Richard Compton (UQAM) and Anja Arnhold (Konstanz) present a talk on polysynthetic words at the CLA at the University of Calgary.
  • May 28, 2016 — Chloé Larouche and François Steffann give a talk on vowels in Inuktitut at the annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Association (ACL-CLA) at the University of Calgary.
  • April 1-3, 2016 — Chris Mauro, Marie-Loup Turenne, Chloé Larouche, and François Steffann present talks on Inuktitut at the 21st WSCLA at UQAM.