Nicole Kruspe is a specialist in the Aslian (Austroasiatic) languages of the Malay Peninsula. She received her PhD in linguistics at The University of Melbourne in 2000 for A Grammar of Semelai, and has since undertaken documentation of the previously undescribed Mah Meri, Ceq Wong, Semaq Beri and Batek languages. Among her interests are fieldwork methodology, language documentation, grammar writing, structural and semantic typology, language contact and the prehistory of the Austroasiatic languages.

In her current project, Singing spiders, sobbing stones (funded by VR), she is investigating the linguistic representation of sound in Aslian languages. Her previous research was on Perceptual modalities across languages and cultures in the Malay Peninsula, focussing on olfaction and vision, and funded by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

She is the Coordinator and Curator of RWAAI (The Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage) at Lund University, an initiative funded by a Riksbankens Jubileumsfond Infrastructure Grant.

Books (2)

• Kruspe, N. (2010). A dictionary of Mah Meri, as spoken at Bukit Bangkong. Oceanic Linguistics Special Publication, 36. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
• Kruspe, N. (2004). A Grammar of Semelai. Cambridge Grammatical Descriptions. Cambridge University Press.

Articles (4)

• Majid, A. & Kruspe, N. (2018). Hunter-gatherer olfaction is special. Current Biology, 28, 2-413. Elsevier.
  • External full text (New window)
• Dunn, M., Kruspe, N. & Burenhult, N. (2013). Time and place in the prehistory of the Aslian languages. Human Biology, 85, 383-399. Wayne State University Press.
• Dunn, M., Burenhult, N., Kruspe, N., Tufvesson, S. & Becker, N. (2011). Aslian linguistic prehistory: a case study in computational phylogenetics. Diachronica, 28, 291-323. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
  • External full text (Restricted access - New window)
  • External full text (Restricted access - New window)
• Kruspe, N. & Hajek, J. (2009). Mah Meri. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 39, 241-248. Cambridge University Press.
  • External full text (Restricted access - New window)

Book chapters (8)

• Kruspe, N. & Burenhult, N. (2019). Pronouns in affinal avoidance registers : Evidence from the Aslian languages (Austroasiatic, Malay Peninsula). In Bouissac, P. (Ed.) Pragmatics and Beyond New Series, The social dynamics of pronominal systems : A comparative approach (pp. 289-317), 304. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
  • Full text (PDF - New window)
• Burenhult, N. & Kruspe, N. (2016). The language of eating and drinking: a window on Orang Asli meaning-making. In Endicott, K. (Ed.) Malaysia’s original people : Past, present and future of the Orang Asli (pp. 175-199). National University of Singapore Press.
  • Full text (PDF - New window)
• Kruspe, N. (2014). Semaq Beri. In Jenny, M. & Sidwell, P. (Eds.) The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages (pp. 475-516). Brill Academic Publishers.
• Kruspe, N., Burenhult, N. & Wnuk, E. (2014). Northern Aslian. In Sidwell, P. & Jenny, M. (Eds.) Handbook of the Austroasiatic Languages (pp. 419-474). Brill Academic Publishers.
• Burenhult, N., Kruspe, N. & Dunn, M. (2011). Language history and culture groups among Austroasiatic-speaking foragers of the Malay Peninsula. In Enfield, N. (Ed.) Dynamics of human diversity: the case of Mainland Southeast Asia (pp. 257-275). Pacific Linguistics.
• Kruspe, N. (2011). Reciprocal constructions in Mah Meri. In Evans, N., Gaby, A., Levinson, S. C. & Majid, A. (Eds.) Reciprocals and Semantic Typology (pp. 149-162). John Benjamins Publishing Company.
• Kruspe, N. (2009). Loanwords in Ceq Wong, an Austroasiatic language of Peninsular Malaysia. In Haspelmath, M. & Tadmor, U. (Eds.) Loanwords in the world's languages: a comparative handbook of lexical borrowing (pp. 659-685). Mouton de Gruyter.
• Kruspe, N. (2004). Adjectives in Semelai. In Dixon, R. M. W. & Aikhenvald, A. Y. (Eds.) Adjective classes: a cross-linguistic typology (pp. 283-305). Oxford University Press.

Conference contributions (1)

• Stevens, M., Kruspe, N. & Hajek, J. (2006). Register in Mah Meri: A preliminary phonetic analysis. In Hoffmann, R. & Mixdorff, H. (Eds.) Speech Prosody 3rd International Conference, Dresden, 2006. TUD Press GmbH.

Miscellaneous (1)

• Kruspe, N. (2009). Ceq Wong vocabulary. Max Planck Digital Library.

Supervision at Lund University (1)

• Yager, J. (2020). Small-scale multilingualism and language contact in egalitarian foragers. Lund University. Dissertation.
  • Full text (PDF - New window)