Dr. Irina Monich specializes in phonology, morphology and historical linguistics. Much of her research focuses on non-segmental morphology, i.e. morphemes that consist of ‘floating’ phonological entities such as morae, features and tonal autosegments. She is also interested in tonal phenomena, especially issues connected with tonal morphology, tonogenesis and diachronic development of tonal systems, and the relationship between tone and phonation.
After receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut, where she primarily researched Southern Bantu languages, she spent four years as a member of Surrey Morphology Group (University of Surrey, UK) working on a project aiming to document and describe Nuer, a language spoken in South Sudan.
Currently, her research centers on Western Nilotic languages, with an emphasis on understanding the complex morphological systems found in these languages in comparative and diachronic perspective.
