Linguistics
students participated in field-initiated research that involved
the collection and analysis of data and the presentation and publication
of the research results. Since 1993, more then twenty-five students
have given more than one hundred single or joint presentations
at top-level, refereed professional meetings and conferences.
Current or recent students have presented more than sixty papers
and co-presented more than fifteen papers with faculty.
Since 1993,
under the aegis of the North Carolina Language and Life
Project, teams of graduate students have conducted sociolinguistic
interviews with more than 750 subjects in different areas across
North Carolina, including the Outer Banks, mainland Hyde County,
the Smoky Mountains (Graham County, Cherokee County), Robeson
County, Warren County, Halifax County, and Columbus County, as
well as fieldwork in the Bahamas (Abaco) and Smith Island (MD).
The William
C. Friday Linguistics Lab in the English Department, established
in 1994 with a grant from NC State, is the first linguistics lab
of this type established in the South, housing the largest archival
collection of dialect data in the region. It has been cited nationally
as a model for combining regular student use and dedicated research
activity within a single linguistics lab.
