Jack Martin is Professor of English and Linguistics at William & Mary in Virginia. He specializes in language documentation and has worked especially closely with tribes in the southeastern U.S. (Muscogee, Choctaw, Seminole, Coushatta). He recently served as president of SSILA and is now coeditor of the journal IJAL.

Title: Applicatives in the Languages of the Southeastern U.S.: Similarities and Paths of Divergence.
Abstract: The indigenous languages of the southeastern U.S. generally make use of dative applicatives, instrumental applicatives, and occasionally locative applicatives. I survey features of these languages from a typological perspective before focusing on specific differences in the uses of instrumental applicatives in Choctaw and Muscogee. While Choctaw appears to be relatively conservative, Muscogee has extended the instrumental to include semi-classificatory uses where an object has parts or is contained in another. These languages help us understand the sources of applicatives and their possible evolution.