A linguistics professor, translator and literature enthusiast, there is not much that Dr. Carol Rose Little has not done.
A visiting scholar in the Department of Linguistics at UC Berkeley, she focuses on understudied languages such as Ch'ol [pronounced as Chol], a member of the western branch of the Mayan language family used by the Ch’ol people in the states of Chiapas, Tabasco, and Campeche in Mexico.
One of the reasons to chose Berkeley for continuing her research was the fieldwork aspect of the curriculum. Her interests lie in syntax and its connections to the semantics and morphology interfaces, which study the internal structure of words.
“The linguistic department here studies different languages from all across the world so it's been really inspiring to be in that environment,” she said.
The most unexpected turn in her work came when she was asked to interpret for Ch'ol-speaking incarcerated individuals. Last year, she helped interpret Ch'ol for a defendant who had been imprisoned in California for a couple of years. So far, she has helped interpret the language for individuals in different courtrooms across the country, including states like Texas, Idaho, and Oregon.
“No one likes going to court. It could be some of the worst days of their lives and I think people want to be able to express themselves in the way they feel most comfortable,” Little said.
Her writing process, she said, helps illuminate any research gaps and shows what still works in the analyses. Interestingly, she said translating poetry from Ch’ol to English has introduced her to new ways of working with the language.
“A lot of linguistics is technical analyses and modeling, but with translating poetry, which is an art,” she said. “You really kind of think about how to convey the message of the poetry to an English-speaking audience who might not have ever known about this language before.”
Outside of her research, Little has translated Cho’l poetry into English and has presented her unique experience studying Ch'ol’s syntax and semantics at esteemed universities. She procured her PhD degree in linguistics from Cornell University with graduate minors in American Indian and Indigenous Studies, and Cognitive Science.
She is also an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Oklahoma in the Department of Modern Languages, Literature and Linguistics.