Maïa Ponsonnet

I am a linguist working on expressivity across languages. My work examines the resources different languages make available to express emotions and other internal states, in order to understand what is universal, and what is culturally specific.

In terms of individual languages, I have long-term experience with several First Nation groups from Arnhem Land. With them I documented several endangered languages of the Gunwinyguan linguistic family, as well as Kriol, an Australian creole spoken by about 30,000 Indigenous people in northern Australia.