Research
Almost all of my research develops from various collaborations, including students and colleagues, like the Wisconsin Englishes Project and the UW Phonetics Lab (both with Tom Purnell and Eric Raimy (both in English) from here at UW), as well as the Speech Perception and Acoustics Lab at the Ohio State University (with Rob Fox and Ewa Jacewicz). This work aims to advance our understanding of speech sounds, how they work as systems and how they change over time. We often draw data from Germanic languages past and present, including contemporary American English.
I also do some work on language contact and language shift (including on heritage languages, on projects led by Janne Johannessen of the University of Oslo and another led by Mike Putnam of Penn State), occasionally on morphology, and of late a little on quantitative approaches to historical and comparative linguistics. Together with Monica Macaulay, my much better half, I look at some phonological, morphological and diachronic issues in Algonquian and Otomanguean languages.
Below are examples of my main current projects. (Already published material is under "CV".) I'm happy to share unpublished work, especially in exchange for comments and suggestions.
Manuscripts under review or in preparation
Books
Thomas Purnell, Eric Raimy & Joe Salmons. Modularity in phonology. Cambridge University Press, Key Topics in Phonology. (In preparation.)
Thomas Purnell, Eric Raimy & Joe Salmons, eds. Language Matters for Wisconsin.
Janne Bondi Johannessen & Joseph Salmons, eds. Norwegian in America. Special issue of the Norwegian Linguistics Journal. (In preparation.)
Janne Bondi Johannessen & Joseph Salmons, eds. Germanic heritage languages in North America: Acquisition, attrition and change. (In preparation.)
Articles
Michael Putnam & Joseph Salmons. Syntactic ineffability and neutralization. (Under review.)
Miranda Wilkerson & Joseph Salmons. Linguistic Marginalities: Becoming American without Learning English. (Under review.)
Benjamin Frey & Joseph Salmons. Dialect and language contact in emerging Germanic. Festschrift in preparation.
Miranda Wilkerson & Joseph Salmons. The Sociohistorical Background of Imposition in Language Contact Change. (In preparation.)
Gregory K. Iverson & Joseph Salmons. Parasitic rule loss in Norse umlaut. (In review.)
Tyler Luiten, Andrea Menz, Angela Bagwell, Benjamin Frey, John Lindner, Mike Olson, Kristin Speth & Joseph Salmons. Beyond the handbooks: a quantitative approach to analysis of Old High German phonology and morphology. Forthcoming, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur.
Ryan Carroll, Ragnar Svare, Joseph Salmons. Not so fast there: Quantifying the evolutionary dynamics of German verbs. Forthcoming, Journal of Historical Linguistics.
Joseph Salmons & Jennifer Delahanty. What immigrant letters can tell us about English in German-American communities. (In preparation.)
Forthcoming research
The History of German: What the past reveals about today's language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Joseph Salmons, Robert Fox & Ewa Jacewicz. Prosodic skewing of input and the initiation of cross-generational sound change. The initiation of sound change: Production, perception and social factors, ed. by Maria-Josep Solé & Daniel Recasens. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Comparative-Historical Linguistics. Oxford Bibliographies Online (OBO): Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Language shift and the Indo-Europeanization of Europe. Die sprachlichen Wurzeln Europas -- Linguistic roots of Europe: Ursprung und Entwicklung -- Origin and development, ed. by Robert Mailhammer & Theo Vennemann. Copenhagen: Tusculanum Press.
The evolution of Germanic. Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An international handbook of language comparison and the reconstruction of Indo-European, ed. Matthias Fritz & Jared S. Klein. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Thomas Purnell & Joseph Salmons. Coherence over time and space in sound change. Memorial Volume for Sergei Starostin, ed. by Vitaly Shevoroshkin et al.
Gregory K. Iverson & Joseph C. Salmons. Copying, Blurring and the Morphological Roles of Germanic Umlaut. Festschrift for [anon.]. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.