July 17, 2025

EagleEye

A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff

Fallon Shares Sabbatical Project at Dictionary Society Meeting

by Leave a Comment

photograph of Paul D. Fallon at the meeting of the Dictionary Society of North America in Buffalo, NY.

Prof. Paul D. Fallon presented and helped celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Dictionary Society of North America

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon presented his sabbatical project at the 50th anniversary meeting of the Dictionary Society of North America (DSNA) biennial meeting held at Buffalo State University, May 29-31, 2025. His talk, “An Analytic Etymological Dictionary of Central Cushitic” discussed work from his Spring 2025 sabbatical project with professional lexicographers and linguists, highlighting the special features of his analysis of the origins of four languages and related dialects spoken in Eritrea and Ethiopia.

UMW Humanities Symposium Showcases Undergraduate Research on Eye-Tracking, Phonology, AI

by Leave a Comment

From left: Alanah Cleare ’25, who earned a degree in marketing from UMW in May; junior Owen Wheeler; and senior Chloe Adler review recently captured footage for a project aimed at assessing the usefulness of AI in filmmaking. The trio conducted research under the guidance of Assistant Professor of Communication and Digital Studies J.D. Swerzenski. They were among four groups that participated in this year’s Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Summer Institute. Photo by Karen Pearlman.

From left: Alanah Cleare ’25, junior Owen Wheeler; and senior Chloe Adler review recently captured footage for a project in this year’s Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Summer Institute(AHSSSI). Photo by Karen Pearlman.

The mini-movie she made with her teammates shows Alanah Cleare falling asleep while studying in the University of Mary Washington’s Hurley Convergence Center. In the AI-assisted dream sequence that follows, she awakens on Campus Walk surrounded by fantastical fruit – talking pineapples and combustible berries that swirl up to the sky and explode in a rainbow.

The ethereal composition was created by UMW junior Owen Wheeler and senior Chloe Adler, along with Cleare, who graduated from UMW in May but returned this summer to take part in a faculty-guided research opportunity. The group was led by Assistant Professor of Communication and Digital Studies J.D. Swerzenski.

Their two-minute Berry Blasters movie was part of a project called “Cameraman vs. Machine,” designed to assess the value of artificial intelligence for student filmmakers. It was one of four presentations delivered last month at Mary Washington’s Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Summer Institute (AHSSSI) Symposium. The fourth annual event – which also explored AI’s potential in creative writing, the role of eye movements in memory, and the evolution of phonological features – was the culmination of five weeks of scholarly summertime work.

“When we’d run into issues, Dr. Fallon would remind us that we were undergraduate students doing graduate-level research,” senior Michael Boehmcke told symposium spectators who gathered inside Combs Hall to hear the groups’ trials and tribulations, along with their triumphs. Read more.

Fallon Presents at African Linguistics Conference

by

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul Fallon at the 54th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul Fallon

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon gave a virtual presentation at the 56th Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL), held online and at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, Minneapolis, on May 6, 2025. His talk was entitled “‘Fire’, ‘nose’, ‘water’, mouth’: Comparing the Leipzig-Jakarta and Swadesh lists in Central Cushitic.” He shared the results of his investigations comparing lexical borrowing using two vocabulary lists in two different time depths for Central Cushitic languages (spoken in the Horn of Africa).

In addition, Fallon has been appointed as one of two Reviews Editors for Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America. The first issue under his editorship appeared in mid-June 2025.

Fallon Mentioned by Free Lance-Star for Work at Regional Spelling Bee

by

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon

Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Mary Washington Paul Fallon was mentioned by The Free Lance-Star in an article entitled “Fredericksburg Regional Spelling Bee set for Saturday.” In the article, it says “On Saturday, Paul Fallon, associate professor of linguistics at the University of Mary Washington and the bee’s pronouncer, will lob a few of the easier words at the contestants in the early rounds. Then, he’ll move to more difficult options.” Read the article.

Fallon Publishes Paper on Origin of Central Cushitic Ejectives

by

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon recently published a paper in the 2024 Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America entitled, “Where do Central Cushitic ejectives come from?” The paper examines words with ejectives, a type of sound made by raising the larynx, in a small family of four languages spoken in Eritrea and Ethiopia. One leading expert, David Appleyard, claimed that almost all words in these languages with ejectives were loanwords resulting from contact with EthioSemitic languages such as Ge‘ez, Tigrinya, and Amharic. While this is true of Xamtanga, Fallon found that only 37% of ejectives in Blin were from borrowings, and in Xamtanga, only 25%. Fallon suggests that the remainder of words in the lexicon were of Central Cushitic origin and therefore it is likely that ejectives should be included in a historical-comparative reconstruction of Proto-Central Cushitic.

Fallon Presents at History of Language Science Meeting

by

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon presented his research to the North American Association of the History of Linguistics (NAAHoLS) on Jan. 5, 2024. His talk, “The undead nature of the term ‘Hamito-Semitic’,” presented qualitative and quantitative research over the decades on the varying names of the Afroasiatic phylum of languages.

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon presented research at the Centennial Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, held in New York City, on Jan. 6, 2024. His poster, “Where Do Central Cushitic Ejectives Come From?,” documented that contrary to previous scholarship, the majority of ejective sounds in the Central Cushitic languages Blin (63%) and Xamtanga (75%) are found in native roots, not in borrowings from EthioSemitic languages. This finding makes it more likely that ejectives may be reconstructed for Proto-Central Cushitic.

Fallon Presents at African Linguistics Conference

by

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul Fallon at the 54th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul Fallon at the 54th annual Conference on African Linguistics

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon presented on June 12, 2023, at the 54th annual Conference on African Linguistics. His talk, titled “Three views of Proto-Cushitic: Theory, Heuristics, and Validity,” analyzed and compared three historical-comparative reconstructions of the Cushitic language family: the one by Aron Dolgopol’skij in 1973, one by Christopher Ehret in 1987, and one by M. Lionel Bender in 2020, each varying in scope, methodology and reconstructions, from a low of 15 consonants to a high of 87. The 46 Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic phylum spoken in and around the Horn of Africa.

Fallon Presents on Blin Speaker at Virginia Humanities Conference

by

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon co-presented with Daniel Yacob of the Ge‘ez Frontier Foundation at the Virginia Humanities Conference on Friday, March 3, 2023. Their paper, “A Lighthouse of Language,” discussed the contributions of the late Tekie Alibekit, a native-speaker of Blin. Tekie helped analyze and develop the Cushitic language of Eritrea, and, with Yacob’s help, succeeded in computerizing letters necessary to write Blin in Ethiopic script, letters also adopted by other languages spoken in the Horn of Africa.

Fallon Reviews Major Book on African Languages

by

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon

Associate Professor Paul D. Fallon of the Department of English and Linguistics was invited to review The Oxford Handbook of African Languages, edited by Rainer Vossen & Gerrit Dimmendaal, and published by Oxford University Press in 2020. His review appears online in The Linguistic List vol. 33, number 2209. The Linguist List is a major online linguistic resource and listserv with thousands of subscribers worldwide.