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Jim Law

Jim Law

Assistant Professor
French and Italian

3137 JFSB - Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602

Biography

I am an Assistant Professor of French and an affiliate of the Linguistics program. I joined the BYU French and Italian Department in 2020 after receiving my PhD from the University of Texas at Austin.

Research Interests

The links between language forms and the meanings they express change over time in often subtle but sometimes surprising ways. My research centers on semantic and pragmatic change in the Romance languages. I work within the cognitive linguistic tradition, notably Construction Grammar and Frame Semantics, and use quantitative corpus methods. I also occasionally do research on L2 pedagogy as well as linguistic variation in digital media.

Teaching Interests

Students in my courses get practical experience doing the kind of work involved in language research – things like transcribing and translating medieval manuscripts, analyzing language data with quantitative methods, and synthesizing information about meaning and usage from dictionaries and corpora.

Education

  • PhD, French , UT Austin (2020)
  • MA, French , UT Austin (2017)
  • BA, French , BYU (2015)

Courses Taught

Publications

James Merrill Law James Law James Law James Law James Law James Law David Barny Rachel Poulin James Law James Law