Joshua Bousquette

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Associate Professor

I teach courses primarily 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.

A large part of my research is focused on heritage languages, or: linguistic communities of bilingual speakers whose mother tongue differs from the language of the society at large. I study both the linguistic effects of bilingualism in these contact varieties, as well as the sociological factors affecting language shift. Additionally, I work on diachronic change in Germanic, including the development and progression of complementizer agreement as a linguistic cycle; and language contact in early Germanic.

Recent publications include articles in American Speech and Language Learning. Current projects include The Linguistic Diversity of German: Sociolinguistic and Structural Variation in Europe and the Diaspora (Oxford University Press), with Josh Brown, Michael Putnam, and Joseph Salmons; and editing The Oxford Handbook of the German Language, with Simon Pickl.

Areas of Interest:
Historical Linguistics
Sociolinguistics and Language Variation
Syntax and Morphology
Specific Research Areas:

Sociolinguistics, Heritage language communities, Historical linguistics, Germanic languages 

Selected Publications:

Joshua Bousquette. 2025. Research traditions in Germanic linguistics. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. 28pp. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.1061

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, 52-84. Oxford: 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.

Courses Taught:
LING (GRMN) 6280
LING 4770/6770
LING 3780
LING 3790
GRMN(LING) 6600
GRMN(LING) 8520
GRMN(LING) 3280
GRMN(LING) 3860
Articles Featuring Joshua Bousquette
2026 LSA Annual Meeting Logo

UGA Linguistics Faculty Share Research at 2026 LSA Annual Meeting

Several faculty members from our Linguistics department presented research earlier this month at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the…


Summer Recap: North American German Archival Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

This past summer, Dr. Joshua Bousquette visited the North American German Dialect Archive (NAGDA) at the Max Kade Institute, located on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. 

Contact Information

bousquet@uga.edu
Office: 207 Joseph E. Brown Hall
Office Hours: By appointment

Other Information

Other Affiliations: Department of Germanic & Slavic Studies, Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures (University of Wisconsin-Madi…

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