Samantha Rarrick, PhD

I am a lecturer at Griffith University in the School of Humanities, Languages & Social Sciences. Currently, I teach courses on linguistics and language endangerment, while continuing my research with small languages in Papua New Guinea (PNG).

 

I started this position in mid 2019, after finishing a Postdoctoral Fellowship with the National Science foundation. My PhD is in Linguistics from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, and my research focuses on language documentation in the Pacific.

 

My current research focuses on documenting and describing Sinasina Sign Language, a sign language of Papua New Guinea. I have also worked with Kere, a spoken Chimbu language, and Hawai'i Sign Language. I also have helped lead a workshop which helps users of endangered sign languages document their own languages here in Hawai'i, and have research interests in the phonology and morphology of both spoken and signed languages, with a focus on implications for typology.

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Although I'm originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, I now live in Queensland, Australia with my husband and our two dogs.

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