Sara Sowers-Wills

Sara Sowers-Wills received her PhD in Linguistics from Indiana University. In addition to conducting research in linguistics, she also writes poetry and is developing an interest in cognitive poetics. She earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa and later taught composition, literature, and creative writing in New Jersey. Prior to entering linguistics, she worked in reference book publishing and edited for academic journals in sleep medicine and neurology.

Education

PhD, Linguistics, Indiana University, 2017
MA, Linguistics, Indiana University, 2013
MFA, English, Writers’ Workshop, University of Iowa, 2001
BA, English, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 1999
BA, Classics, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 1999

Courses Taught

Introduction to Linguistics
Phonetics & Phonology
Constructed Languages
Child Language Acquisition
College Writing
Advanced Writing for Human Services
Advanced Writing for Business & Organizations

Teaching Interests

Introductory linguistics
Constructed languages
Phonetics and phonology
Language acquisition
Writing (creative and technical)

Research Interests

Cognitive linguistics
Child phonological development
Constructed languages in linguistics pedagogy
Morphologically rich languages 
Corpus analysis

Language Interests

Hungarian
Turkish
Ojibwe
Latin
Greek (Classical & Modern)
French

Publications

Sowers-Wills, S. (to appear). Sounds like a dynamic system: A unifying approach to language. Linguistics Vanguard.

Sowers-Wills, S. 2018. A corpus study of near-synonyms and their lexicographic representation. Indiana University Linguistic Club Working Papers, 18(1).

Sowers-Wills, S. 2017. "Using schema theory to support a whole-word approach to phonological acquisition." Cognitive Linguistics, 28(1), 155-191.