Rudy Professor Emeritus Albert Valdman served as first chair of the Department of Linguistics at Indiana University. He was Director of French Language Instruction in the Department of French and Italian. Dr. Valdman founded the Creole Institute in 1975, which closed on May 20, 2019. He has held visiting appointments at the University of the West Indies (Jamaica), the University of Nice, Harvard University, and the University of Oregon. His research and teaching span a broad range of areas in applied and descriptive linguistics, including second language acquisition research, foreign language teaching, creole studies, and French linguistics. He is one of the pioneer researchers in the study of French language outside of France.
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