Amalia Skilton
Biographic Data
| ID | 800863 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Amalia Skilton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Amalia |
| FAMILY NAME | Skilton |
| SIGNATURE | SKILTON A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9848-5688 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Digital infrastructure and its impacts on language work: A case study of FieldWorks Language Explorer (FLEx)
Linguists need to collect, organize, analyze, and share data. Despite the variability of linguistic research in terms of inputs and outcomes, there are some common stages, including morphological parsing, lexicon creation, and textual editing. A common software tool for this work is FieldWorks Language Explorer (FLEx). In this article, we examine some of the ways that FLEx’s data structures conflict with contemporary practices in language work. T…
Anaphoric demonstratives occur with fewer and different pointing gestures than exophoric demonstratives
This study investigates the co-organization of place-referring demonstratives (e.g. here/there) and pointing gestures by speakers of Ticuna. Ticuna is an Indigenous Amazonian language with a six-term demonstrative system which lexically distinguishes exophoric demonstratives (equivalent to there far from me) from anaphoric demonstratives (equivalent to there where I mentioned). This lexical contrast overlaps with, but is distinct from, the pragma…
The deictic content of demonstratives
What do demonstratives, like this/that and here/there , encode about their referents? The traditional answer argues that the deictic content of demonstratives is mostly about distance from the speaker – that proximals like this encode that the referent is near the speaker, while distals like that mean it is far from them. This speaker‐centered, distance‐based view is intuitively appealing, but recent research in linguistics, psychology, and anthr…
Noun classes
This chapter surveys nominal classification systems in Australian languages, focussing on noun class systems proper—those where all nouns are assigned to a class, and govern concord on other elements of the noun phrase and/or verb phrase. Noun class systems are widely attested and richly diverse on the continent. Non-Pama-Nyungan languages possess the most elaborate systems, with as many as eight noun classes in the lexicon and eight constituent …
Learning speaker- and addressee-centered demonstratives in Ticuna
This study investigated the acquisition of demonstratives (e.g., this/that , here/there ) by 45 children (1;0 – 4;11) learning Ticuna, an Indigenous Amazonian language with an unusually complex demonstrative system. I analyzed 89 10-minute samples from video recordings of child-caregiver interaction, examining how often children and caregivers produced each demonstrative type, as well as relationships among children’s age, children’s demonstrativ…
Differential place marking beyond place names: Evidence from two Amazonian languages
Not all spatial adjuncts behave alike. In some languages, certain spatial adjuncts display different marking or different combinatorial possibilities than others. Recent functional-typological studies make two claims about this differential place marking phenomenon: (1) it is primarily motivated by noun semantics, opposing place names and other nouns; and (2) it is primarily realized as a contrast between zero-marking and overt marking of spatial…
Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss
While global patterns of human genetic diversity are increasingly well characterized, the diversity of human languages remains less systematically described. Here we outline the Grambank database. With over 400,000 data points and 2,400 languages, Grambank is the largest comparative grammatical database available. The comprehensiveness of Grambank allows us to quantify the relative effects of genealogical inheritance and geographic proximity on t…
Nomes contáveis e incontáveis em Ticuna
Este estudo examina a distinção entre nomes contáveis e de massa em Ticuna (língua isolada). Com base em dados primários de coleta de campo, mostro que o padrão de substantivos contáveis e de massa se diferencia em vários domínios gramaticais. No sistema numérico do Ticuna, demonstro que os nomes massivos são incompatíveis com a marcação de plural nominal e verbal. No sistema dos quantificadores, mostro que numerais e quantificadores da língua Ti…
Cross-linguistic differences in demonstrative systems: Comparing spatial and non-spatial influences on demonstrative use in Ticuna and Dutch
Demonstratives and visibility: Data from Ticuna and implications for theories of deixis
In many Indigenous languages of the Americas, demonstratives are said to encode whether the referent is visible. Some scholars, however, argue that all visibility meanings in demonstratives are epiphenomenal on spatial, epistemic modal, or nonvision evidential content. Drawing on elicitation, experimental data, and corpus data collected in fieldwork, I argue that two demonstratives of Ticuna (isolate; Brazil, Colombia, Peru) do display visibility…
Assertive questions in Máíhĩki
Assertive questions in Máíhĩki
Cross-linguistic differences in demonstrative systems: Comparing spatial and non-spatial influences on demonstrative use in Ticuna and Dutch
Demonstratives and visibility: Data from Ticuna and implications for theories of deixis
In many Indigenous languages of the Americas, demonstratives are said to encode whether the referent is visible. Some scholars, however, argue that all visibility meanings in demonstratives are epiphenomenal on spatial, epistemic modal, or nonvision evidential content. Drawing on elicitation, experimental data, and corpus data collected in fieldwork, I argue that two demonstratives of Ticuna (isolate; Brazil, Colombia, Peru) do display visibility…
Assertive questions in Máíhĩki
Nomes contáveis e incontáveis em Ticuna
Este estudo examina a distinção entre nomes contáveis e de massa em Ticuna (língua isolada). Com base em dados primários de coleta de campo, mostro que o padrão de substantivos contáveis e de massa se diferencia em vários domínios gramaticais. No sistema numérico do Ticuna, demonstro que os nomes massivos são incompatíveis com a marcação de plural nominal e verbal. No sistema dos quantificadores, mostro que numerais e quantificadores da língua Ti…
Cross-linguistic differences in demonstrative systems: Comparing spatial and non-spatial influences on demonstrative use in Ticuna and Dutch
Demonstratives and visibility: Data from Ticuna and implications for theories of deixis
In many Indigenous languages of the Americas, demonstratives are said to encode whether the referent is visible. Some scholars, however, argue that all visibility meanings in demonstratives are epiphenomenal on spatial, epistemic modal, or nonvision evidential content. Drawing on elicitation, experimental data, and corpus data collected in fieldwork, I argue that two demonstratives of Ticuna (isolate; Brazil, Colombia, Peru) do display visibility…
Differential place marking beyond place names: Evidence from two Amazonian languages
Not all spatial adjuncts behave alike. In some languages, certain spatial adjuncts display different marking or different combinatorial possibilities than others. Recent functional-typological studies make two claims about this differential place marking phenomenon: (1) it is primarily motivated by noun semantics, opposing place names and other nouns; and (2) it is primarily realized as a contrast between zero-marking and overt marking of spatial…
Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss
While global patterns of human genetic diversity are increasingly well characterized, the diversity of human languages remains less systematically described. Here we outline the Grambank database. With over 400,000 data points and 2,400 languages, Grambank is the largest comparative grammatical database available. The comprehensiveness of Grambank allows us to quantify the relative effects of genealogical inheritance and geographic proximity on t…
Noun classes
This chapter surveys nominal classification systems in Australian languages, focussing on noun class systems proper—those where all nouns are assigned to a class, and govern concord on other elements of the noun phrase and/or verb phrase. Noun class systems are widely attested and richly diverse on the continent. Non-Pama-Nyungan languages possess the most elaborate systems, with as many as eight noun classes in the lexicon and eight constituent …
Learning speaker- and addressee-centered demonstratives in Ticuna
This study investigated the acquisition of demonstratives (e.g., this/that , here/there ) by 45 children (1;0 – 4;11) learning Ticuna, an Indigenous Amazonian language with an unusually complex demonstrative system. I analyzed 89 10-minute samples from video recordings of child-caregiver interaction, examining how often children and caregivers produced each demonstrative type, as well as relationships among children’s age, children’s demonstrativ…
Anaphoric demonstratives occur with fewer and different pointing gestures than exophoric demonstratives
This study investigates the co-organization of place-referring demonstratives (e.g. here/there) and pointing gestures by speakers of Ticuna. Ticuna is an Indigenous Amazonian language with a six-term demonstrative system which lexically distinguishes exophoric demonstratives (equivalent to there far from me) from anaphoric demonstratives (equivalent to there where I mentioned). This lexical contrast overlaps with, but is distinct from, the pragma…
The deictic content of demonstratives
What do demonstratives, like this/that and here/there , encode about their referents? The traditional answer argues that the deictic content of demonstratives is mostly about distance from the speaker – that proximals like this encode that the referent is near the speaker, while distals like that mean it is far from them. This speaker‐centered, distance‐based view is intuitively appealing, but recent research in linguistics, psychology, and anthr…
Digital infrastructure and its impacts on language work: A case study of FieldWorks Language Explorer (FLEx)
Linguists need to collect, organize, analyze, and share data. Despite the variability of linguistic research in terms of inputs and outcomes, there are some common stages, including morphological parsing, lexicon creation, and textual editing. A common software tool for this work is FieldWorks Language Explorer (FLEx). In this article, we examine some of the ways that FLEx’s data structures conflict with contemporary practices in language work. T…
Linguistics (8 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Deixis (4 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (4 works) · Demonstrative (3 works) · Geography (3 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (3 works)