Home Department: Linguistics
SLAT Areas of Specialization: Linguistic Dimensions of L2 Learning, Sociocultural Dimensions of L2 Learning, Technology in Second Language Teaching
Dr. Fountain earned her PhD in the Joint Program in Anthropology and Linguistics at the University of Arizona in 1998. Her primary role in the department is supporting undergraduate instruction in the major and in general education. She grew up in Eastern Washington State, earned her undergraduate degree in Theatre from Northwestern University (1986), and a Master of Arts in Communication from the University of Arizona in 1988. She has been at the University of Arizona in one capacity or another (with a short absence in which she worked at Pima Community College) since the Fall of 1986.
She works in linguistics pedagogy, language revitalization and reclamation and community-based language technology development. She has interests and background in linguistic anthropology, formal linguistic theory (especially morphophonology and prosodic phonology), and supports collaborations with the American Indian Language Development Institute. She has benefitted from language instruction in Diné Bizaad (Navajo) from Professor Mary Ann Willie and Tohono O’odham from Regents Professor Ofelia Zepeda. She currently works for a community-based language technology project under the direction of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s Language Programs.
Research Interests: language revitalization and reclamation. Indigenous languages, particularly those of North America. Human language technologies for the benefit of Indigenous language communities. Linguistics pedagogy. Morphology, Prosodic Phonology, Sociolinguistics.
Selected Publications
Anderson, Skye, Shannon Bischoff, Jeff Punske and Amy Fountain. 2020. Learning about language by language invention. In Punske, et al (eds), Language Invention in Linguistics Pedagogy. Oxford University Press.
Bischoff, Shannon, Amy Fountain, Mizuki Miyashita, and Deborah Cole (eds). 2013. Persistence of Language: Constructing and confronting the past in the voices of Jane H. Hill. Edited volume. J. Benjamins.
Bischoff, Shannon, Audra Vincent and Amy Fountain. 2018. Tgwe’l nok’o’qin he spintch ‘itsmeyptsni’wes hiɬ ‘itsqhwaq’wpmi’wes ‘ul snchitsu’umshtsn: One hundred years of learning and analyzing the Coeur d’Alene language together. In Bischoff and Jany (eds), Perspectives on Language: Community-based Research. Cambridge University Press.
Punske, Jeffrey, Nathan Sanders and Amy Fountain (eds). 2020. Language Invention in Linguistics Pedagogy. Edited volume. Oxford University Press
Valentinsson, Mary-Caitlyn, Shiloh Drake and Amy Fountain. 2024. Languages and social issues: An investigator’s toolkit. Cambridge University Press.