Current Graduate Students
Adam Barnhardt
Ph.D. Student (barnha60@msu.edu)
Links: website; ORCID; Researchgate; Google Scholar
My primary research foci lie in sociophonetics/phonology and language change. I am especially interested in applying concepts pertaining to sociocultural meaning to the examination of sound change through experimental and mixed-methods approaches. I am additionally invested in exploring the extent to which these concepts can be integrated within a framework of cultural evolution to offer holistic explanations of the actuation and spread of linguistic change.
Ben Airola
Ph.D. Student (airolabe@msu.edu)
Links: website
I’m a 2nd year in the Linguistics PhD program. I completed my B.A. at MSU in 2019 with majors in Japanese and Linguistics. My research interests include (articulatory) phonology, phonetics, and neurolinguistics, with a focus on the integration of theory with experimental methods. My current research involves phonological representation of geminates. I’m particularly interested in inter-disciplinary research in kinesiology and the cognitive sciences with the purpose of bridging the mind-body problem in phonology and neuroscience.
Chad Hall
Ph.D. Student (hallcha4@msu.edu)
Links: website; ORCID ID: 0000-0001-8338-7455; Google Scholar; Researchgate; Academia
My research focuses on sociolinguistics and phonetics/phonology. For my dissertation I am currently compiling the first open-access speech corpus of Dearborn Lebanese American English (DLAE) in order to increase exposure of this dialect. I am also running analysis on the data collected with a focus on the stopping of interdental fricatives by these speakers.
Cherilyn Wang
Jack Rechsteiner
MA Student (rechste4@msu.edu)
Links: website
My research focuses primarily on sociophonetic variation in nonbinary speakers. I’m passionate about understanding the inner workings of language and the interplay between language and society, as well as how insights into these topics can be applied to other areas. Sociolinguistics, data analysis, and natural language processing are especially interesting to me.
Jason Smith
Ph.D. Student (smit2922@msu.edu)
My research program centers on descriptive and theoretical syntax, with a focus on bringing novel data from un- or under-analyzed languages to bear in the development and refinement of syntactic theory. To this point my primary focus has been to describe and analyze syntactic data from Mende, a Mande language spoken in Sierra Leone. My research begins with data collection from speakers in both in-situ and ex-situ fieldwork contexts. This data informs my analyses of A-bar movement phenomena, including focus and wh-movement, as well as islandhood. My dissertation is based on four years of field work and argues that both Mende’s canonical SOV and non-canonical SVO word orders are derived from an underlying head-initial verb phrase. By looking at binding data, quantifier float, post-verbal coordinated direct objects, and unergative verbs with post-verbal cognate objects, I argue that underlyingly Mende is VO. Following Kayne (2004), I propose that its OV order is derived via leftward movement of the object above the verb. This analysis informs our understanding of OV word order and challenges the assertion that Mande languages are strictly SOVX.
Jiasheng Guo
Ph.D. Student (guojiash@msu.edu)
I am interested in semantics, pragmatics, and psycholinguistics. Most recently, I have been working on a project regarding cue-based memory retrieval.
Jingying Xu
Ph.D. Student (xujing21@msu.edu)
My principal interest is in first language acquisition of syntax and semantics. My current research focuses on children’s telicity interpretation. My goal is to make a comparative investigation of English, Mandarin, Brazilian Portuguese and other languages to attain deeper insights into the cross-linguistic acquisition of telicity, which will shed further light on the development of the tense and aspect system. I also have a strong interest in the interdisciplinary research in cognitive science including both psycholinguistics and computational linguistics. My other ongoing and previous projects include the computational modeling of parameter setting, and the acquisition of the control structure and the count-mass issue in Mandarin.
John Ryan
Ph.D. Student (ryanjoh9@msu.edu)
My primary interest is in first language acquisition of syntax and semantics. I am also interested in psycho/neurolinguistics and the study of cognitive science, making use of interdisciplinary methods and insights to further understanding of language and the brain. In particular, my goal is to learn about the way brain development leads to the emergence of linguistic competency and potential neural correlates of language. Currently, I am working on the acquisition of tense and aspect in English speaking children with the Child Language Acquisition lab.
Komeil Ahari
Ph.D. Student (kolahiah@msu.edu)
My main interest is in theoretical syntax and word order, and my research focuses on Persian syntax and the interesting word order facts that surface in different phrasal domains. While Persian has generally been analyzed as a SOV language in the literature, the seemingly mixed linear ordering of elements in different phrases (as well as in the domain of Complex Verbs – those verbs containing a nonverbal and a light verbal unit) point to some inconsistencies in the traditional word order accounts. Given these inconsistencies, Persian begs for a unified analysis for deriving the different word orders, to which I’ve proposed that all phrases in Persian are head-initial and that the “mixed” orders are derived from a basic hierarchical Specifier-Head-Complement relationship. My research, therefore, bears on the cross-linguistic debate in the syntactic literature as to which of the two following theories best captures mixed headedness in languages: (1) whether complements are selected to the left or to the right of their heads is due to inherent properties of heads as lexical items, or (2) all heads uniformly select their complements to either the left or to the right, and heads and phrases subsequently move in the syntax.
Naiyan Du
Ph.D. Student (dunaiyan@msu.edu)
Links: website
My research has focused on using experimental methods to probe the nature of phonological representations and bridging the gap between theoretical and applied linguistics by employing theory and technology to facilitate perception and acquisition of foreign sound systems. The last few decades have witnessed a great advancement of language technology, which provides us with powerful tools to observe and understand languages. I believe by implementing both theory and technology, issues in language learning can be accurately identified and corresponding solutions can be provided, which can make the language learning experience to be a more intuitive and efficient one.
Philip Pellino
Ph.D. Student (pellinop@msu.edu)
Broadly, my research addresses questions about how meaning arises in natural language (semantics/pragmatics) and how sentence structure contributes to the creation of that meaning (syntax). More specifically, I think about Negation phenomena, Information Structure and Discourse Modeling. I am particularly fascinated with what are sometimes referred to as “non-canonical” or “irregular” negations, and “negative inference,” one example being the negative information that can be contributed as a sub-part of a word’s overall meaning. To illustrate, in the sentence Phil almost bought a painting, part of the meaning is that Phil didn’t buy a painting. I am curious about how we generate these and other such inferences as well as the nature of different kinds of “not-at-issue” meaning (presuppositions, implicatures and “backgrounded” entailments). Regarding the application of this research, I am interested in Natural Language Processing (NLP)—a branch of Artificial Intelligence concerned with enabling computers to engage variously with human languages—and its responsible and ethical implementation into areas of Commerce and Medicine.
Shannon Cousins
Ph.D. Student (cousin63@msu.edu)
Links: website
My research interests include semantics and neuro-linguistics with a special interest in cognitive science, experimental methodologies, and theoretical interfaces. My current research is on the semantic and syntactic distributional behaviors of aspectual verbs linking their online (real-time) comprehension patterns. I want to approach linguistics from the perspective of both the sciences and the humanities, designing research to be intelligible to a wide audience. I love engaging in discussions about the scientific, interdisciplinary, and cultural implications of our linguistic research!
Xiayimaierdan Abudushalamu
Ph.D. Student (abudusha@msu.edu)
My primary interest is in Sociolinguistics; my research has been focusing on people’s language use on online media environment and how it is influenced by governmental censorship over time, and how this influence interacts with the ongoing language change happening in offline society. I’m also interested in Phonology and Phonetics, mainly focusing on vowel and vowel-consonant harmony in Uyghur and other Turkic languages. I’ve also done research on child language acquisition, particularly on the acquisition of phonological processes in Uyghur spoken in China and how learning Chinese Mandarin in kindergartens and schools influences the acquisitions of these processes.
Yaxuan Wang
Ph.D. Student (wangyax3@msu.edu)
Links: website
My linguistic research focuses on semantics and pragmatics, with a special interest in quantifiers and presupposition and the interaction between the two. The analysis is mainly under the framework of dynamic semantics, with a comparison to trivalent logic semantics. The negative quantifier “none” is found to have extremely interesting properties, which leads to my further investigation into the negation phenomenon. I believe my research will provide insights into key properties of the human linguistic system. In addition to linguistics, I am also conducting research on Mongolian studies, including Mongolian language and translation, history, and international relationships.
Ye Ma
Ph.D. Student (maye2@msu.edu)
Links: website; Google Scholar
Real-time language processing is my passion! I am a linguist specializing in neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, semantics and pragmatics, computational linguistics, and cognitive science. I am interested in discovering how meanings are constructed in the human brain in real time, how expressions with multiple interpretations are processed, and how contextual information affects language comprehension. I am also interested in language processing in machines, especially in Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Yongqing Ye
Ph.D. Student (yeyongqi@msu.edu)
I am primarily interested in phonetics, speech perception and production. My research is driven by two mutually reinforcing goals: (1) understanding the structures and relationships in speech perception and production and (2) using the observations and insights drawn from the performance system to inform our understanding of phonological representations and sound change. I am currently working on describing the patterns of nasalization in different phonological contexts in Mainstream American English, and investigating what nasalization can tell us about perception, production and sound change.