Raina Heaton

Ph.D.   Linguistics, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
M.A.    Linguistics, Tulane University
B.S.     Linguistics, Tulane University

I am a linguist interested in documenting and describing endangered and under-resourced languages, and I work with language communities on projects related to language research and language revitalization. I also manage the Native American Languages collection, where we are currently working to make language materials available digitally. My linguistic work has focused on morphosyntactic typology and rarer syntactic phenomena, particularly the structure and function of antipassives and their relationship to ergativity. My fieldwork to date has centered on the Indigenous languages of the Americas, mainly Mayan languages and Enlhet-Enenlhet languages. I have also been a linguist for Kuhpani Yoyani Luhchi Yoroni (Tunica Language Project) to revitalize Tunica, an awakening language of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana, since 2010. Additionally, I head a collaborative documentation project for Enenlhet, a language of the Central Chaco (Paraguay), and am working on a grammar and dictionary for this language. Since coming to Oklahoma, I have collaborated with language practitioners from tribes all over the state to make use of existing archival materials in their programs, and also to record new material which will benefit future generations of language learners. I am very proud of my students who have done novel work in Oklahoma relating to (among other things) language acquisition, linguistic repositories, lexicography, and fieldwork ethics.

• Language documentation
• Archival preservation
• Digital returns/repatriation
  
• Enlhet-Enenlhet languages
• Language conservation and revitalization
• Language endangerment
• Morphosyntax
• Typology
• Language variation and change
• Language acquisition
• Ergativity
• Mayan languages and linguistics
• Language isolates of the southeastern US

NAS 4213: Introduction to Language Documentation and Revitalization

NAS 4243. Methods of Language Documentation

NAS 4223. Survey of Native American Languages

NAS 4233. Language Acquisition for Revitalization

NAS 3013. Native American Studies Internship

NAS 3990. Independent Study

NAS 5920. Native American Studies Practicum (Native American Languages Collection)

Director of the Oklahoma Native American Youth Language Fair, 2018 - present

OU Humanities Forum board member, 2022-2024, 2025-2026

OU Presidential Professor, 2024

Heaton, Raina. Competing constructions in Kaqchikel focus contexts. Linguistics.  

Kuhpani Yoyani Luhchi Yoroni/Tunica Language Working Group. Rowinataworu Luhchi Yoroni/Tunica Language Textbook. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.

Parulian, Nikolaus, Ryan Dubnicek, Daniel Evans, Yuerong Hu, Glen Layne-Worthey, J. Stephen Downie, Raina Heaton, Kun Lu, Raymond Orr, Isabella Magni, and John Walsh. Tuning out the noise: Benchmarking entity extraction for digitized Native American literature. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology 60(1):681-685.

O’Grady, William, Raina Heaton, and Sharon Bulalang. The roots of endangerment. Commentary on Grenoble and Osipov 2023. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 13(1):83-87.

Heaton, Raina. Variation and change in the distribution of *-(V)n and *-(V)w in Kaqchikel. In Papers in honor of Lyle Campbell, ed. by Nala Lee and Wilson de Lima Silva, 47-71. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

O’Grady, William, Raina Heaton, Sharon Bulalang, and Jeanette King. The role of input in language revitalization: The case of lexical development. Language Documentation & Conservation 15:433-457.

Heaton, Raina. Antipassive and antipassive-like constructions in Mayan languages. In Antipassive: Typology, diachrony, and related constructions, ed. by Katarzyna Janic and Alena Witzlack-Makarevich, 549-578. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Heaton, Raina.. Review of Zúñiga, Fernando and Seppo Kittilä. 2019. Grammatical voice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Linguistic Typology 25(1):185-197.

Heaton, Raina. Antipassives in cross-linguistic perspective. Annual Review of Linguistics 6:131-153.

Heaton, Raina, Eve Okura and Lyle Campbell. Women in the history of American Indian linguistics. In Women in the History of Linguistics, ed. by Wendy Ayres-Bennett and Helena Sanson, 345-366. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  

Elliott, John and Raina Heaton. Languages and language politics in the Paraguayan Chaco. In the Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, ed. by Stanley Brunn and Roland Kehrein, 1-27. Springer Nature Switzerland.

Mining the Native American authored works in HathiTrust for Insights. PIs: With Kun Lu (lead), Raina Heaton, and Raymond Orr. HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) Advanced Collaborative Support (ACS) grant, Scholar-Curated Worksets for Analysis, Reuse & Dissemination (SCWAReD) project,  $30,000. 2021-2022.

Heaton, Raina. Towards an Enenlhet grammar and dictionary. University of Oklahoma Junior Faculty Fellowship (OU JFF), $7,000. 2020-2022.

Heaton, Raina. Enenlhet Language Documentation Fieldwork in Paraguay. University of Oklahoma Junior Faculty Fellowship (OU JFF), $7,000. 2019-2020.

Heaton, Raina. Creating online access for the Native American Languages collection. National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Implementation (HCRR) Grant, $345,494. 2022-2025.

Marshall, Kimberly (lead), Dale Bennie, Brian Burkhart, Robert Con Davis, Raina Heaton, and Hunter Heyck.New stories of the West, for the West. PIs:  National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) American Rescue Plan (ARP): Humanities Organizations, $500,000. 2022-2023.

Heaton, Raina. The Native American Languages Collection: Infrastructure and Stewardship. Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Museums for America, $73,882. 2020-2021.

Heaton, Raina. Planning preservation and access for the Native American Languages Collection. National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Humanities Collections and Reference Resources (HCRR) Foundations Grant, $50,000. 2020-2021.

Heaton, Raina. Oklahoma Native American Youth Language Fair. OK Humanities, Grants for Cultural Experiences, $10,000. 2024-2025.  

Heaton, Raina, via the OU Foundation. Funding for the Oklahoma Native American Youth Language Fair. Oklahoma City Community Foundation Culture & Community iFund grant, $20,000. 2023-2024.

Heaton, Raina.. New development for the Native American Languages collection. Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM). Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  

Heaton, Raina. New developments in language archiving: A community-responsive approach. Siouan and Caddoan Languages Conference (SCLC). Norman, OK.   

 O’Grady, William, Raina Heaton, and Sharon Bulalang. Acquiring morphosyntax in the immersion classroom: An input study. 8th International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC). Honolulu, HI [virtual].

Heaton, Raina. Competing structures: Discourse correlates of argument indexing in Kaqchikel. Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT), Austin, Texas.  

Heaton, Raina and Kavon Hooshiar. Engaging communities in digital development for the Native American Languages Collection. Language Documentation and Archiving Conference, Berlin, Germany.

Lu, Kun, Alyssa Vetter, Isabella Magni, Kilie Goins, Nikolaus Parulian, Raina Heaton, Raymond Orr, and Ryan Dubnicek. Mining the Native American authored works in HathiTrust for insights. Digital Humanities Conference, Tokyo, Japan. [virtual]

John Elliott, Jens Van Jysel, and Raina Heaton. From lexical verbs to function words in Enlhet-Enenlhet. Fourth Symposium on Amazonian Languages. Berkeley, CA.  

O’Grady, William, Raina Heaton, Sharon Bulalang, and Jeanette King. The role of input in language revitalization: Growing students’ vocabularies. The 7th International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC). Honolulu, HI.

Heaton, Raina and Andrew Abdalian. Tunica language evolution: From 1880 to 2020. Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA). New Orleans, LA

• Tunica Language Project
• Enenlhet Documentation Project
• Online access for the Native American Languages collection
• Comparative Language Input Project
• Antipassives in Kaqchikel

Enenlhet Documentation. Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America

The Kaqchikel Collection of Raina Heaton. Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America