Conor McDonough Quinn, PhD

Conor McDonough Quinn is an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern Maine Department of Linguistics, and co-founding member of First Languages AI Realities. A documentary and revitalization linguist whose theoretical research centers mainly around morphosyntax, he has worked primarily with the Eastern Algonquian (especially Wabanaki) speech communities Indigenous here in the Northeast. His dissertation examines gender, person, and referential- and clausal-dependency morphology in Penobscot verbal argument structure. Subsequent and ongoing collaborative work has included creating an audiovisual archive of Passamaquoddy conversational speech, editing a legacy manuscript dictionary of Penobscot for publication, co-editing (with Carol Dana, Gabriel Paul, and Margo Lukens) a multi-volume series of Penobscot-language traditional literature, devising learner-L1-informed approaches to ESOL/ELL teaching, and helping develop effective adult heritage-learner curricula for Passamaquoddy-Wolastoqey, Listuguj Mi’gmaw, Abenaki, Long Island Algonquian, Makah, Kwak̓wala, and Gwich’in efforts, among others. This last point is his current focus, i.e. helping to radically improve second-language pedagogy strategies for Eastern Algonquian and other Indigenous North American language reclamation work.