Paul Fallon (pfallon)

Academic Degrees

Paul D. Fallon, Professor of Linguistics, joined UMW in 2005. An abridged version of his dissertation, The Synchronic and Diachronic Phonology of Ejectives, was published by Routledge in 2002. An expert on the sound patterns of language, Dr. Fallon has published more than twenty articles or book chapters on a variety of languages (Blin, Chechen, Georgian, Greek, and others) in such publications as the proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, the Annual Conference on African Linguistics, the World Congress of African Linguistics, the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, and others. He also has more than 50 peer-reviewed conference presentations.

One of Dr. Fallon’s research interests involves a description of the Blin language in Eritrea (Horn of Africa), as well as the historical development of Blin and other Central Cushitic languages, and the historical reconstruction of Proto-Cushitic as a whole.

He has in recent years developed two projects with the assistance of small teams of undergraduate students. One project is a searchable database of the the world's writing systems (www.writingsystems.org). The other is an online encyclopedia of phonological features called www.atomsofsound.org.

Dr, Fallon serves as Reviews Editor for "Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America." He is a lifetime member of the Linguistic Society of America, and a member of the International Phonetic Association, the American Dialect Society, the Dictionary Society of North America, and Phi Beta Kappa.