Matthew S. Dryer

Dryer is a notable linguist in typology, syntax, and language documentation.  He has done field work on Kutenai (language isolate), Walman (Torricelli), Srenge (Torricelli), and Poko-Rawo (Sko family).  His most recent field work is to document languages in Papua New Guinea.  His field work and research over the 25 years have yielded a large typological database of over 1,000 languages.  One of his most significant contributions to language typology concerns the correlations between word order and other linguistic features.  Interested readers can refer to the article, “The Greenbergian Word Order Correlations” (Language, 1992).  Another important work of Dryer’s is the World Atlas of Language Structures (2005), for which he is one of the co-editors and primary authors.  He contributed more than twenty chapters to this atlas, most of which discuss word order typology.  See Florida Linguistics’ “Ling Links” section in the main menu for a description and link to WALS Online.