Biography
Tom Klingler is Richard V. and Seola Arnaud Edwards Associate Professor of French and a member of the interdisciplinary program in linguistics at Tulane, where he teaches courses in both French and linguistics. He His research focuses on French and Creole in Louisiana and has received support from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Louisiana Board of Regents, and the French Cultural Services. His publications include ‘If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That’: The Creole Language of Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana (2003), and the co-authored Dictionary of Louisiana Creole (1998), Dictionary of Louisiana French as Spoken in Cajun, Creole, and American Indian Communities (2009).
Research
The preparation of a Differential, Historical, and Etymological Dictionary of Louisiana French
The Differential, Historical, and Etymological Dictionary of Louisiana French (DHEDLF) is a work that, through the lens of the lexicon of Louisiana French, will provide new insight into Louisiana’s role as a nexus of transatlantic contact involving peoples, languages, and cultures of Europe, Africa, North America, and the Caribbean. Work completed on the project to date shows that the Louisiana French lexicon comprises a unique mixture of words from dialects of European French, Canadian (Acadian and Québécois) French, the French creoles, American Indian languages (of North America, South and Central America, and the Caribbean), and African languages that reflects its complex colonial and post-colonial history as a site of intersection of a variety of different regions and cultures. The dictionary will provide rich, in-depth information on the lexicon of Louisiana French that, by revealing to users what elements are shared with other French-speaking regions of the world and what elements are unique to Louisiana French, will enhance our understanding of the place of this language variety within the broader francophone world. The DHEDLF is a collaborative project involving three scholars, one from Tulane (Tom Klingler) and two from Indiana University (Kevin Rottet and Albert Valdman). The NOCGS funds will be used to hire Linguistics PhD student Nathan Wendte to gather information from existing lexicographical sources on European varieties of French, North American varieties of French, and all of the French creoles, which will be combined into reports that the three editors (Klingler, Rottet, and Valdman) will use in drafting the entries for each word.
