About

Hello! So you want to learn a bit more about me? Check out the sections below!

Personal

My name is Jordan Andusha Glendower Douglas-Tavani /ˈdʒɔɹ.dɪn ɑn.ˈduʃə glɛn.ˈdaʊ.wɚ ˈdʌg.lɪs tʌ.ˈvani/. I use he/they pronouns. I am of Tlingit, Welsh, and Icelandic descent. I am a child (but not of) of Clan Kaagwaantaan. However, I look and I am treated as white. I acknowledge the incredible privilege that this grants me. It is because of this privilege, in part, that I dedicate myself to the advancement of indigenous peoples and our languages. 

I'm originally from the small coastal Oregonian town of Seaside. I received my BA in Linguistics from the University of Oregon in Eugene, where I met my wife. After receiving my BA, I completed my MA and Ph.D in linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Outside of linguistics, I am an avid strategy, simulation, and RPG computer gamer. Additionally, I am a big fan of tabletop RPGs, in particular, Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. I've been a DM for about 10 years.

My Team!

My team in life consists of the three best beans! The first is my wonderful wife, Nikola. We met at the University of Oregon in Eugene, were she was that cool upper classman and I was a dorky first year. Three years later, she asked me out and we have been going strong ever since. We got married on 10.10.20 (because of course it has to be a cute date too). We enjoy playing D&D together with friends, designing our dream future Hobbit Hole, and adventuring together in virtual and pen-and-paper worlds. The second is our wonderful child Meatloaf, an elderly polydactyl who I've had since she was a kitten many moons ago. The third is a recent addition. We drove through a literal blizzard to get him. The One. The Only. Toast P. Strudel!

Non-Academic Interests

I have a number of non-academic interests and pursuits (I have a whole section dedicated to it -- check it out!).

First, I am interested in tabletop RPGs and creating content for them. As a forever DM of 7 years, I have created a lot of worlds and custom content for my players that I want to share more broadly with the world, as I have an interest in game design and worldbuilding. I have completed one supplement (about 50 pages), which you can find on the Role-Playing Section of this website. 

Related to this is my interest in cartography. I love to create maps of the worlds that I build. A collection of those are available on this website as well. 

One of the core design principles that I have in worldbuilding is that I start with people and culture. Fundamental to that, in my opinion, is language. I create cultures around languages in my worlds. This process is called conlanging -- and it is actually how I originally got interested in linguistics. I have made over a dozen conlangs so far, to varying degrees of completeness. You will be able to find these in the Non-Academic Pursuits section soon. 

Outside of worldbuilding, I have long held an interest in poetry. I haven't done that much in a while that hasn't been for specific people. I am hoping to go back through my backlog of older poetry soon to see what I am still proud enough of to share. 

Academic & Professional

I am, first and foremost, an academic and a linguist. In my work, I focus on the study of indigenous languages of the Americas. I am interested in documenting, describing, and revitalizing these languages. I am also interested in morphosyntax, semantics (in particular, spatiotemporal semantics), language change (historical or via language contact), and construction grammar. 

The work I did in my undergraduate studies looked at the Cariban languages of South America. In that, I reconstructed the postpositional system for the language family. 

In my graduate studies, I worked with the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians. I worked primarily with miluk tɬiis (miluk -- yes this is intentionally lowercase), a Coosan language. However, I have also done some work with hanis tɬiis (hanis, Coosan), Alsea, and Siuslaw. My master's thesis, in an effort to affirm oral histories, reconstructed the Coosan language family. My dissertation was a Reference Grammar of miluk tɬiis.