Brendon Yoder, PhD

Affiliate Assistant Professor of Linguistics; Program Chair, MA Linguistics
I am a linguist who loves to apply scholarship to real-world issues. I have ongoing relationships with several minority language communities in Indonesia, where we work together to develop writing systems and translate the Bible. At TWU, my passion is to equip others to come alongside minority language communities.

Brendon Yoder spent 13 years in Indonesia, where he worked with SIL International and Wycliffe Bible Translators in language development and Bible translation. He conducted field research in several languages, working most extensively with the Abawiri language community. He collaborated with the community to develop a writing system for their previously unwritten language and, since 2022, has been working remotely with a local team to translate the Bible into Abawiri. At TWU, Brendon combines his field experience with his love of teaching and learning to help equip students to become competent fieldwork-oriented linguists.

See: https://canil.academia.edu/BrendonYoder

See: https://www.canil.ca/wordpress/about-canil/faculty/

See: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brendon-Yoder

  • PhD in Linguistics (University of California Santa Barbara; 2020)
  • MA in Linguistics (University of North Dakota; 2011)
  • BA in Linguistics (Moody Bible Institute; 2006)

Expertise

Linguistics, Papuan languages, Tone systems, Linguistic fieldwork, Language documentation, Discourse and grammar, Acoustic phonetics, Bible translation, Participatory Methods for Engaging Communities

Selected publications:

  • In press. Abawiri grammar cameo. In Nicholas Evans & Sebastian Fedden (eds.), The Oxford guide to Papuan languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • 2024. Participatory orthography development in Abawiri. In Timothy Stirtz, Michael Cahill & Philip Davison (eds.), Participatory linguistics: Methods and case studies from around the world (Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication 29), 204–216. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. https://hdl.handle.net/10125/74755.
  • Yoder, Brendon (ed.). 2024. Topic in discourse: Areal overviews and case studies (SIL E-Book 087). Dallas: SIL Global. https://www.sil.org/resources/publications/entr...
  • 2020. A grammar of Abawiri, a Lakes Plain language of Papua, Indonesia. Santa Barbara: University of California Santa Barbara PhD dissertation. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4mj571tr.
  • 2020. The grammar of Abawiri arguments: When grammatical relations don’t matter. Invited talk at the DIU Academic Forum, Dallas.
  • 2019. Argument relations in Abawiri: Grammar, semantics, and pragmatics. 5th Workshop on the Languages of Papua (WLP5). Manokwari, Indonesia.
  • 2018. The Abawiri tone system in typological perspective. Language (Phonological Analysis) 94(4). e266–e292. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2018.0067.
  • 2017. Grammatical relations: how Abawiri works without them. In Paper presented at the 26th Annual Linguistics Symposium at California State University, Fullerton. Fullerton, CA.
  • 2011. Phonological and phonetic aspects of Enggano vowels. Grand Forks, ND: University of North Dakota MA thesis. https://commons.und.edu/theses/4457/.

Affiliations & Memberships

  • Canada Institute of Linguistics
  • Wycliffe Bible Translators

  • LIN(G) 4/576 Acoustic Phonetics
  • LIN(G) 680 Advanced Field Methods
  • LIN(G) 688 Tone Analysis