Current Graduate Students
To add yourself to the list or change your details, please email us using the Contact page.
|
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.
|
|
syntax and word order
|
|
Benjamin Airola (he/him)
Ph.D. Student email: [email protected] website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-airola-6861881a4/ |
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.
|
Adam Barnhardt (he/him)
Ph.D. Student email: [email protected] website: https://sites.google.com/view/adam-barnhardt/home ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8921-0415 Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Adam-Barnhardt Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=4Kwuti8AAAAJ&hl=en |
sociolinguistics
|
|
Shannon Cousins (she/her)
Ph.D. Student email: [email protected] website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-cousins-49bb96147/ |
My research interests include semantics and neurolinguistics with a special interest in cognitive science, experimental methodologies, and theoretical interfaces. My current research is on the semantic and syntactic distributional behavior of aspectual verbs along with how they pattern during online (real-time) computation. I want to approach linguistics from the perspective of both the sciences and the humanities. I love engaging in discussions about the scientific, interdisciplinary, and cultural implications of our linguistic research!
|
|
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.
|
|
syntax
|
|
phonetics, phonology
|
Chad Hall (he/him)
Ph.D. Student email: [email protected] website: https://chadhall1.wixsite.com/chadhall ORCID ID: 0000-0001-8338-7455 Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=QwxFUnsAAAAJ&hl=en Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Chad-Hall-5 Academia: https://michiganstate.academia.edu/ChadHall |
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.
|
|
Arlo Kaczor
email: [email protected] |
sociolinguistics, phonology
|
|
Mitchell Klein (he/they)
Ph.D. Student email: [email protected] ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7465-8425 |
phonology, semantics
|
|
Ye Ma (she/her)
Ph.D. Student email: [email protected] website: https://yemabnu1992.wixsite.com/my-site-4 |
psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, semantics
|
|
Monica Obiri-Yeboah
email: [email protected] |
syntax, language contact, sociolinguistics, phonology, morphology
|
|
syntax, semantics
|
Jack Rechsteiner (they/them)
Master Student email: [email protected] website: https://jackrechsteiner.github.io/ |
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.
|
|
Matthew Savage
email: [email protected] |
sociolinguistics
|
|
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.
|
|
child language acquisition
|
|
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.
|
|
My principal interest is in first language acquisition of syntax and semantics. My current research focuses on the acquisition of aspect. I’m particularly interested in the interpretation and acquisition of telicity. My goal is to make a comparative investigation of English, Mandarin and other languages to attain deeper insights into the cross-linguistic acquisition of telicity, which may shed further light on . 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, the comprehension of control in Mandarin 2-year-olds, and the acquisition of the count-mass issue in Mandarin.
|
|
Vertical Divider
phonology, sociolinguistics
|
