Research
Computational Linguistics
Historical Linguistics
Language Contact
Phonetics-Phonology
Psychology of Language
Socio-discourse
Syntax-Semantics

Syntax and Semantics

Faculty

  • Marlyse Baptista: Morphology/syntax interface in pidgin and creole languages, syntactic theory, cognition, contact linguistics.
  • Samuel Epstein: Syntax (Principles & Parameters, Minimalism), psycholinguistics (first and second language acquisition, parsing), generative linguistics, philosophy of science.
  • Jeff Heath: Morphology, Lexicon, NW & W Africa, Australia.
  • Ezra Keshet: (visiting Assistant Professor 2008-09) semantics, syntax-semantics interface, pragmatics and discourse.
  • Hisatsugu Kitahara: (visiting faculty from 2007) syntactic theory, Principles & Parameters, Minimalism, Japanese syntax
  • Acrisio Pires: Syntax, interfaces of syntax with language change/acquisition, semantics and natural language processing, Romance Linguistics.
  • Richmond Thomason: Semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, computational linguistics.

Other Faculty

with interest in Syntax and Semantics

University of Michigan

  • Steven Abney: (Linguistics)   Computational Linguistics, Learning, Syntax.
  • Julie Boland: (Linguistics and Psychology)   Psycholinguistics, sentence comprehension and parsing, lexical representation, lexical/syntactic interface, syntax-semantics interface, computational models of processing.
  • Anthony Gillies: (Philosophy)   philosophy of language, formal semantics (semantics of modal constructions); logic, language and information.
  • Kazuko Hiramatsu: (University of Michigan, Flint)   Acquisition of syntax, experimental syntax.
  • Natalia Kondrashova: (Linguistics, Slavic Language and Literatures)   Syntactic Theory, Syntax/Semantics Interface, Slavic Morphosyntax.
  • John Lawler: (Linguistics)   Semantics, English Language, Applied Computational Linguistics, Indonesian Linguistics.
  • Rick Lewis: (Psychology, EECS and Linguistics)   Computational Modeling, Psycholinguistics, Sentence Processing, Cognitive Architectures, Unified Theories of Cognition.
  • Elaine McNulty: (Linguistics)   First language acquisition, syntax, neurolinguistics.
  • Teresa Satterfield: (Romance Languages)   Romance Linguistics (Spanish), Syntax, First Language Acquisition, Bilingualism.
  • Jamie Tappenden: (Philosophy)   Philosophy of Language, Philosophy and History of Mathematics, Philosophical Logic.
  • Annemarie Toebosch: (University of Michigan-Flint)   Syntax, morphology, Principles & Parameters, Germanic linguistics (Dutch, English, German, Plautdietsch)
  • Jindrich Toman: (Slavic Languages and Literatures)   Slavic and German Linguistics.

At nearby universities

  • Ljiljana Progovac: (Wayne State University)   Syntax and its interfaces with Semantics and Morphology; Slavic Linguistics.
  • T. Daniel Seely: (Eastern Michigan University)   Syntax (Principles & Parameters/Minimalism), Psycholinguistics/Language Acquisition, Semantics, Syntax-Semantics interface. R. W. Collins Distinguished Faculty Award, Holman Outstanding Faculty, EMU Ambassadors Recognition for Excellence in Teaching.

Grad Students

  • Tim Chou: syntactic theory, minimalism, semantics, syntax-semantics interface.
  • Dina Kapetangianni: Syntax, language acquisition, English and Greek syntax and acquisition. (Awarded a Humanities Research Candidacy Fellowship, a Rackham Graduate School Predoctoral Fellowship, a UofM Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, and a Tsangadas Fellowship for research on post-Classical Greece.)
  • Donggeol Lee: syntactic theory, minimalism.
  • David Medeiros:   syntactic theory, language acquisition, field linguistics.
  • Miki Obata: Syntactic theory and psycholinguistics. (Awarded a Rackham Graduate School Predoctoral Fellowship)
  • Damon Tutunjian: Psycholinguistics/syntactic processing.

Recent Phds

  • Mark Arehart: (MITRE Corporation - Human Language Technology)   PhD Dissertation - Noun compound semantics: linguistic and general-purpose reasoning (2003) Committee: Richmond Thomason (chair), Steven Abney, Acrisio Pires, Dragomir Radev.(Awarded a Rackham Graduate School Predoctoral Fellowship).
  • Christopher Becker: (Lecturer, Wayne State University) PhD Dissertation - Clausal and Nominal Agreement in Russian: A Unified Approach (2008). Committee: Acrisio Pires (Chair), Samuel Epstein, Natalia Kondrashova, Ljiljana Progovac, Jindrich Toman. (Awarded a UofM Outstanding Graduate Instructor (GSI) Award, Rackham Graduate School Predoctoral Fellowship, and a Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship - Czech).
  • Gerardo Fernandez Salgueiro (Tenure-track, National Taiwan Normal University) PhD Dissertation - Aspects of the syntax of (TP-)coordination, across-the-board extraction, and parasitic gaps. Committee: Samuel Epstein (Co-chair), Acrisio Pires (Co-chair), Richard Lewis, T. Daniel Seely and Hisatsugu Kitahara. (Awarded a Humanities Research Candidacy Fellowship).
  • Catherine Fortin: (Tenure-Track, Carleton College)   PhD Dissertation - Indonesian sluicing and verb phrase ellipsis: Description and explanation in a minimalist framework (2007). Committee: Samuel Epstein (Chair), Richard Lewis, Julie Boland, Acrisio Pires, Jason Merchant (Awarded a Rackham Graduate School Distinguished Dissertation Award, a Rackham Graduate School Predoctoral Fellowship, UofM Outstanding Graduate Instructor Award, and a Foreign Language Areas Studies (FLAS) Fellowship for two years).
  • Hee-Soo Kim: PhD Dissertation - Causatives, Passives and their ambiguities in Korean, Japanese and English (2005) Committee: Acrisio Pires (co-chair), Marilyn Shatz (co-chair), Julie Boland, Peter Ludlow.(Awarded a Humanities Research Candidacy Fellowship and a Dissertation Fellowship).
  • Rose Letsholo: (Assistant Professor, University of Botswana)   PhD Dissertation - Syntactic Domains in Ikalanga (2002) Committee: Samuel Epstein (chair), Mark Hale, Peter Hallman, Rick Lewis, Acrisio Pires, Teresa Satterfield.
  • Ivelisse Martinez: (Society for Research in Child Development)   PhD Dissertation - The effects of language on children's understanding of agency and causation (2000) Committee: Marilyn Shatz (chair), Susan A. Gelman,Lawrence Hirschfeld, Christina Tortora.
  • Hamid Ouali: (Tenure-Track, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)   PhD Dissertation - Unifying Agreement Relations: A Minimalist Analysis of Berber (2006) Committee: Samuel Epstein (co-chair), Acrisio Pires (co-chair), Richard Lewis, Jamal Ouhalla (University College Dublin), T. Daniel Seely(Awarded a Rackham Graduate School Predoctoral Fellowship and a Humanities Research Candidacy Fellowship).
  • Andrea Stiasny: (Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan)   PhD Dissertation - The Acquisition of Clitics in Croatian and Spanish and its Implications for Syntactic Theory (2006) Committee: Acrisio Pires (chair), Samuel Epstein, Lijljana Progovac, Marilyn Shatz, Jindrich Toman.(Awarded a Humanities Research Candidacy Fellowship and a Dissertation Fellowship).
  • Annemarie Toebosch: (Tenure-Track, University of Michigan-Flint)   PhD Dissertation - Gender-animacy and the morpho-syntax of object clitics in Dutch (2003) Committee: Samuel Epstein (co-chair), Christina Tortora (co-chair), William Baxter, Marilyn Shatz.

Recent Undergraduate Honors Students

  • Natasha Abner: (UCLA, Linguistics Dept)   Honors Thesis - Resultatives gone minimal (2005) Committee: Acrisio Pires (chair), Samuel Epstein. Highest Honors, U. of Michigan Honors V. Voss Award for Excellence in Academic Writing, Linguistics Outstanding Graduating Senior Award.
  • Edward Cormany: (Cornell University, Linguistics Dept)   Honors Thesis - Syntactic Models for Coordination in English and Latin. Committee: Acrisio Pires (Chair), Samuel Epstein. Highest Honors.
  • Charles Crissman: (University of Berkeley)   Honors Thesis - Incorporating Reference Time into a Binding Approach to Sequence of Tense (2006) Committee: Acrisio Pires (chair), Samuel Epstein. Highest Honors, Churchill Scholarship/Cambridge University, University of Michigan Honors Sydney Fine Teaching Award, Linguistics Outstanding Graduating Senior Award
  • Avram Derrow: Honors Thesis - The Empirical Content of Differentiating Redundancy. (2001) Committee: Samuel Epstein (chair) Highest Honors. University of Maryland Best Undergraduate Linguistics Essay.
  • Nayana Dhavan: (Harvard University)   Honors Thesis - A non-absolutive and unified movement analysis of Hindi passives and ergatives (2006) Committee: Acrisio Pires (chair), Samuel Epstein. Highest Honors, U. of Michigan Honors V. Voss Award for Excellence in Academic Writing, Matthew Alexander Award for Outstanding Honors Thesis.
  • Justin Fitzpatrick: (University of London, Linguistics Dept.)   Honors Thesis - Movement Locality in a Derivational Theory (2001) Committee: Samuel Epstein (chair). Revised version published in Linguistic Inquiry. Highest Honors. M. Alexander Award for Outstanding Honors Thesis in Linguistics. NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
  • Lauren Friedman: (University of Pennsylvania) The Loss of Old English Null Expletive "it" (2008). Committee: Acrisio Pires (Chair), Marlyse Baptista. Highest Honors, U. of Michigan Honors V. Voss Award for Excellence in Academic Writing, Matthew Alexander Award for Outstanding Honors Thesis.
  • Jon Gajewski: (University of Connecticut, Linguistics Dept.)   Honors Thesis - The Syntax and Semantics of Complete-list Questions in a Non-Standard Variety of English and Non-Cyclic Adjunction. (2000) Committee: Samuel Epstein (co-chair), Christina Tortora (co-chair). Part of thesis published in Linguistic Inquiry. Linguistics Outstanding Undergraduate Achievement Award. NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
  • Kate Golski: Honors Thesis - The Phono-Syntactic Interfaces (2002) Committee: Samuel Epstein (Chair) Matthew Alexander Award for Outstanding Honors Thesis in Linguistics.
  • Dave Kush: (University of Maryland) Honors Thesis - Interest: Applying a serialization phrase structure to Hindi verbal compounds. (2007). Committee: Samuel Epstein (Chair), Acrisio Pires. Highest Honors.
  • Jessica Rett: (UCLA)   Honors Thesis - Japanese Numeral Classifiers: The Effect of Linguistic Configurations on Category Membership. (2001) Committee: Marilyn Shatz (Chair), Samuel Epstein. High Honors. Honorable Mention: NSF Graduate Fellowship Program. Linguistics Annual Leadership and Academics Prize.
  • Keli Rulf: (Northwestern University)   Honors Thesis - The Syntax, Semantics, and Early Acquisition of One (2004) Committee: Samuel Epstein (chair), Acrisio Pires. Linguistics Outstanding Undergraduate Achievement Award.
  • Justin Wedes. Bare Necessities? A Quantitative Study of Bare Noun Frequency in Cape Verdean Creole (2008). Committee: Marlyse Baptista (Chair), Acrisio Pires.
  • Gabriel Williams: Honors Thesis - Verb Movement in French and English (2001) Committee: Samuel Epstein (Chair) Highest Honors.

Syntax Discussion Group

The syntax-semantics group provides a forum within which Linguistics students and faculty at UM, and from neighboring universities (thus far including EMU, MSU, Oakland University, Wayne State and UM-Flint) can informally present or just discuss and share their ongoing research in these domains. We also form study or reading groups, which grapple with mastering a particular article or book, through exchange of ideas and comparison of interpretation. The group is frequently used by students to practice conference presentations and receive constructive feedback from "familiar faces".

See the discussion groups page for the current schedule. Or contact Acrisio Pires (pires@umich.edu) for more information.