Deborah C. Morton

Deborah C. Morton is an Associate Teaching Professor of Linguistics and African Studies at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, where she has worked since 2015 and serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Linguistics Program. She received her PhD in Linguistics from The Ohio State University in August 2014.

Her research focuses on African languages, particularly the Anii language spoken in Togo and Benin, West Africa. Her primary interests include fieldwork-based language analysis, formal phonology (especially tonology), formal semantics (particularly tense-aspect-modality), language description and documentation, language contact, and language variation. She is passionate about describing little-studied language varieties and has been involved in language development workers' efforts to promote literacy in the Anii community.

Her recent publications primarily examine aspects of the Anii language, with a focus on temporal and aspectual reference, vowel harmony systems, and tonology. These works contribute significantly to the documentation of Ghana-Togo Mountain Languages and under-represented African linguistic systems.

Professor Morton teaches a wide range of courses including The Study of Language, Foundations of Linguistics, Introduction to Semantics, Linguistic Fieldwork, Language in Africa, Phonetic Analysis, Anthropological Linguistics, and proseminars in Language Science and Professionalization for graduate students.

She is actively involved with the Beninese language development ONG LINGO Bénin (https://www.lingo-benin.org/) and has contributed to the Anii-language magazine (www.revue-gugu.org), including serving as a translator for their proverbs site (https://revue-gugu.org/proverbes/).