Principal Investigators
Ash Asudeh
Affiliations: University of Rochester & Carleton University
Research interests: Syntax, semantics, pragmatics, morphology, cognitive science, linguistic theories and grammatical architecture, language and logic, computational linguistics, psycholinguistics
Ash is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Rochester and in the Department of Cognitive Science at Carleton University. He is also the current Director of the Center for Language Sciences at Rochester.
Ash’s research focuses on theoretical aspects of language structure (compositional semantics, syntax, morphology) and the mappings/interface between syntax and semantics—construed as multiple distinct modules related by correspondence functions—as well as the relationship between semantics and pragmatics and the relationship between language structure and language form, especially between syntax and semantics on the structure side and morphology on the form side.
He is the author of The Logic of Pronominal Resumption (2012, OUP) and Enriched Meanings (2020, OUP). He is also one of the authors of Lexical-Functional Syntax (2nd ed., 2016, Wiley-Blackwell) and one of the editors of Modular Design of Grammar (2021, OUP).
Pronouns: he/him
Dan Siddiqi
Affiliation: Carleton University
Research interests: Morphology, syntax, linguistic theories and grammatical architecture
Dan is a Professor of Linguistics at Carleton University, in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies. He is also currently the Associate Dean of Programs in the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs at Carleton. He is currently finishing his term as co-editor of the Canadian Journal of Linguistics.
Dan’s research focuses on morphology (especially stem allomorphy), comparison and synthesis of linguistic theories (metatheory), and grammatical architecture.
He is the author of Syntax within the Word (2009, John Benjamins), and was the lead editor of Morphological Metatheory (2016, John Benjamins). He has also co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Syntax (2014) and The Routledge Handbook of North American Languages (2019).
Collaborators
Oleg Belyaev
Affiliations: Lomonosov Moscow State University & Russian Academy of Sciences
Research interests: Iranian languages, East Caucasian languages, clause combining, morphological case systems, Lexical-Functional Grammar
Oleg is a lecturer at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics at Lomonosov Moscow State University, and a research fellow at the Department of Typology at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
His research interests include Iranian and Nakh-Daghestanian languages (especially Ossetic and Shiri Dargwa), syntax and semantics of clause combining (coordination vs. subordination, correlatives, converbs), typology and theory of morphological case systems, and formal grammars (especially Lexical Functional Grammar).
Bronwyn Bjorkman
Affiliation: Queen’s University
Research interests: Morphology, syntax, semantics
Bronwyn is an Associate Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Queen’s University, where she teaches in the Linguistics program.
Her research focuses on the morphology, syntax, and semantics of verbal inflection, particularly tense and aspect. She’s interested in how information is represented by features, and how features mediate between realization (in morphology) and interpretation (in semantics). She’s also interested in the relationship between morphological and phonological representations, specifically the question of how much phonology “knows” about morphological structure.
Pronouns: she/her
Tina Bögel
Affiliations: University of Konstanz & University of Frankfurt
Research interests: Phonology, syntax-prosody interface, cliticization, grammatical architecture, computational linguistics, psycholinguistics
Tina is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Konstanz, working within theoretical, computational and experimental linguistics, with a focus on the syntax-prosody interface, clitics, and phonology in general.
She is currently also writing her Habilitation at the Institute of Linguistics at the University of Frankfurt.
Michael Everdell
Affiliation: University of Texas at Austin
Research interests: Uto-Aztecan, O’dam (Southeastern Tepehuan), argument realization, lexical semantics, agreement, suppletion, language change
Mike is a PhD student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin.
His research focuses on the ways people classify events, states, their participants and potential participants, and represent them linguistically. He explores these issues through the ways that word meanings serve as the basis of morphological and syntactic processes that can realize and augment those meanings.
Mike’s work to date focuses on O’dam (also called Southeastern Tepehuan) an understudied Uto-Aztecan language spoken primarily in Durango, Mexico. Within this research program, he has explored a range of issues around argumenthood, argument realization, grammatical functions, nominal possession, and constituent structure.
Argumenthood is a particularly interesting phenomenon because it offers insights into the most important elements of linguistic systems (i.e. the thematic roles allowed to be arguments in a given language), but also the features of arguments that languages view as particularly important in events.
Paul B. Melchin
Affiliation: Carleton University
Research interests: Syntax, semantics, morphology, event structure
Paul’s research focuses on the study of syntax and its interfaces with semantics and morphology. It generally has the overall metatheoretical goal of simplifying linguistic theory by reducing redundancies between different modules of the grammar. More specifically, his research interests include the syntax and semantics of argument structure and event structure, Ojibwe morphosyntax, grammatical architecture and metatheory, and comparative syntax of noun phrases.
Will Oxford
Affiliation: University of Manitoba
Research interests: Syntax, morphology, Algonquian languages, language documentation and description
Will is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Manitoba.
Will does theoretical and descriptive research on syntax and morphology, usually involving the Algonquian languages and often from a comparative perspective, with an emphasis on agreement and morphosyntactic alignment. His fieldwork experience includes Innu, Ojibwe, Cree, and Oji-Cree (Algonquian) as well as Kapampangan (Philippine).
Much of his research has sought to understand the nature of the direct-inverse agreement pattern in Algonquian languages. He is currently working on a monograph with the provisional title The Algonquian Inverse.
Will’s work on agreement has used Algonquian data to investigate the structural sources of variation in agreement patterns and person hierarchies. His work on the concept of structural subjecthood seeks to understand the nature of subject hood, how the determination of subjecthood varies across languages, and whether some subjects are more “subject-like” than others.
Will has also worked on the form side of language. His work on the realization of inflectional morphology considers the role of morphological operations in the determination of inflectional syncretisms and morphological templates. His work on phonology has taken a diachronically-informed perspective on the role of contrast and syllable structure in phonological patterns.
Last, but most certainly not least, Will is involved in the documentation and description of Algonquian languages since conducting fieldwork for a dictionary project in the Innu Nation in 2006. His more recent descriptive work takes a pan-Algonquian perspective.
Students
Veronica Burrage
Affiliation: University of Rochester (PhD)
Research interests: Syntax, morphology
Veronica is a doctoral student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Rochester. Her primary supervisor is Ash Asudeh.
Veronica is currently interested in argument structure alternations and mismatches between argument structure and morphosyntactic realization. She is interested in phenomena such as complex predicates, noun incorporation, and morphosyntactic operations that affect transitivity.
Sam Turnbull
Affiliation: Carleton University (PhD)
Research interests: Syntax, morphology
Sam is a doctoral student in the Linguistics program at Carleton University. Her primary supervisor is Dan Siddiqi.
Sam’s master’s thesis examined the phenomenon of so-called long-distance agreement from an LRFG perspective. The languages she focused on were Ojibwe and Hindi-Urdu.