Rate My Professor Maia Ponsonnet

Ponsonnet's research centers on anthropological linguistics, particularly the semantics of emotions, expressivity, and internal states across languages, with long-term fieldwork among First Nations communities in Arnhem Land. She has documented endangered Gunwinyguan languages like Dalabon via an Endangered Languages Documentation Programme project and examined emotion expression in the shift from traditional languages to Kriol. Her major publications include the monograph Difference and Repetition in Language Shift to a Creole: The Expression of Emotions (John Benjamins, 2019), the article The Linguistic Embodiment of Emotions: A Study of the Australian Continent (Ethos, 2022), and Emotional Language: A Brief History of Recent Research (2022). Additional contributions feature chapters on sustainable linguistics, country and language in literature, generic terms for subsections in Australia, and event plurality in Kriol, alongside articles on Dalabon grammar and pragmatic functions. Her work elucidates universal patterns and cultural specificities in emotion lexicons, advancing language documentation, typology, and revitalization. Ponsonnet co-edits volumes on language contact and variation, participates in workshops, and engages in public outreach through seminars and lectures.