I am a sociolinguist in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Rochester. My research focuses on language variation and change in the context of language shift and other social changes. Please see my research page for more information about my projects.

Along with my colleague Nadine Grimm I co-direct the Grammar and Variation Lab.

I am currently an Associate Editor at Asia Pacific Language Variation (find us on Twitter here).

I read the The Upgoer Five Challenge, and was inspired to write a description of my research in the 10000 most commonly used words. This is what I do:

I study how people talk, how they think about how they talk, and how the ways that people talk change over time, especially in places where people have more than one way of talking and where some ways of talking are being lost.

Email: maya.r.abtahian@rochester.edu