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Joshua Bousquette

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Associate Professor of Linguistics, and of Germanic Studies
Research Interests:

I teach courses in sociolinguistics and historical linguistics, working primarily within the Germanic family of languages. My research seeks to better understand the social factors and typological tendencies affecting language change; and the social, economic and community factors that affect language shift, particularly in heritage communities.

Recent publications include: a chapter in Josh Brown's edited volume on language maintenance and language shift; an article published in Language Learning on language death, co-authored with Mike Putnam; a recent article on language shift in American Speech; the chapter on Germanic in The Indo-European Languages (Routledge, 2017), co-authored with Joe Salmons; and two special issues of Journal of Language Contact (11.2 & 11.3, 2018), which I co-edited with Joshua R. Brown.

  • Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison

Joshua Bousquette & Joshua R. Brown. 2025. Language Maintenance and Language Shift among Heritage Languages in North America. Handbook of Language Contact Vol. 2 (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft), 503-515. Berlin: De Gruyter. 

Joshua Bousquette. 2025. "Language Mixing": Lexical Borrowing in Wisconsin Heritage German. Selected Proceedings of the 14th Annual Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas (WILA 14). Bergen Language and Linguistics Studies 15(1): 15–24.

Joshua Bousquette. 2022. The Verticalization Model of Language Shift: The Great Change in American Communities. In Joshua R. Brown (ed.) The Verticalization Model of Language Shift: The Great Change in American Communities, 52-84Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Joshua Bousquette & David Natvig. 2022. Heritage Language Home and Community: Gendered Division of Labor and Language Shift. Selected Proceedings of the 11th Annual Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas(WILA 11): 55-62.

Joshua Bousquette, Kristin Melum Eide, Arnstein Hjelde, and Michael T. Putnam. 2021. Competition at the Left Edge: Left-Dislocation vs.Topicalization in Heritage Germanic. Selected Proceedings of the 10th Annual Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas (WILA 10): 11-21.

Joshua Bousquette. 2020. From Bidialectal to Bilingual: Evidence for two-stage language shift in Lester W. J. ‘Smoky’ Seifert’s 1946-1949 Wisconsin German Recordings. American Speech 95(4): 485-523.

Joshua Bousquette & Michael T. Putnam. 2020. Redefining Language Death: Evidence from Moribund Grammars. Language Learning 70(S1): 188-225.

Joshua Bousquette. 2019. Left-dislocation in Wisconsin Heritage German: Evidence from the Seifert Recordings, 1948-1949. Selected Proceedings of the 9th Annual Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas (WILA 9): 28-36.

Joshua Bousquette. 2018. Is das der Hammer, das du den Traktor gebrochen hast mit? Preposition Stranding in Wisconsin Heritage German. Selected Proceedings of the 8th Annual Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas (WILA 8): 18-27.

Joshua Bousquette. 2018. You take the low road and I’ll take the high road: Variation in agreement structure in Wisconsin Heritage German. Journal of Language Contact 11(3): 527-564.

Joshua Bousquette & Joseph Salmons. 2017. The Germanic Languages. In Mate Kapović (ed.) The Indo-European Languages, 2nd edn., (Routledge Language Family Series), 387-420. London: Routledge.

Joshua Bousquette, Benjamin Frey, Michael Putnam, Joseph Salmons & Daniel Nützel. 2016. Parasitic Gapping in Bilingual Grammar: Evidence from Wisconsin German. Heritage Language Journal 13(1): 1-28.

Todd Ehresmann & Joshua Bousquette. 2015. Phonological Non-integration of Lexical Borrowings in Wisconsin West Frisian. In Janne Bondi Johannessen & Joseph Salmons (eds.) Germanic heritage languages in North America: Acquisition, attrition and change (Studies in Language Variation 18), 234-255. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Joshua Bousquette. 2014. Complementizer Agreement in eastern Wisconsin: (Central) Franconian features in an American heritage language community. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung / Language Typology and Universals 67(4): 561-588.

Events featuring Joshua Bousquette
zoom.us/j/97145515051

As language shift progresses, a heritage language can change its orientation from communicative to symbolic for the heritage language community. The change toward a broadening of the symbolic uses of the language is a hallmark of the post-vernacular

Articles Featuring Joshua Bousquette

Recently our very own Dr. Joshua Bousquette was selected as one of this year's Excellence in Academic Program Assessment Award recipients for his former role as the Graduate Coordinator of the German MA Program!

The Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities(CURO) recently had it's annual symposium on April 7th-8th. The purpose of this symposium is to "offer an opportunity for students to communicate their research to the broader community" under the guidance of…

by Katherine Hoovestol

Our warmest congratulations to Dr. Joshua Bousquette for being awarded the prestigious Willson Fellowship for Fall 2021 by Franklin College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Georgia, and UGA's…

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