This 3-year project (2017-2020) was a fieldwork-based study of the Nam Noy Valley situation in central upland Laos, where three minority languages (Saek, Kri, and Brou) are spoken in close proximity. The project’s aims were to document the three languages, investigate their degree of convergence, and analyze the ecology and social dynamics around these languages.…

This 3-year project (2026-2029) is a comparative study of how and why people give and ask for reasons in everyday social interaction across cultures. This project is funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project (AUD 783k, DP260103317) “Reason-giving in the wild: a cross-linguistic study”, awarded to Nick Enfield and Jack Sidnell (U Toronto). This…

The word ‘Huh?’ appears to be universal in human languages for using when you have not caught what someone just said. It is found to have very similar form and function in spoken languages across the globe. This is one of the findings of a major cross-linguistic study by Nick Enfield with fellow researchers Mark…

What is truth? The question has everything to do with language. The question of truth came to the fore upon Brexit and Trump’s first term, but truth is an ancient problem and will never not matter. After several years of working with colleagues at USYD and internationally on the question of truth, and especially on…