Research on syntax at UMass is highly collaborative and empirically based. We believe that discovering the nature of natural language syntax requires not just a deep understanding of current models of sentence structure and syntactic features, but also a broad range of skills in collecting and analyzing linguistic data. The syntax faculty’s research exemplifies these goals in a variety of ways, including seeking extensive cross-linguistic evidence that reveals the typology of syntactic systems, testing theoretical models against data from understudied languages, and developing models of syntactic knowledge in collaboration with specialists in semantics, psycholinguistics, phonology and language development.
Faculty
| Faruk Akkus fakkus@umass.edu |  | Research interests: Interfaces of syntax with morphology and semantics, Varieties of Arabic, Turkish and Kurdish varieties |
| Rajesh Bhatt bhatt@linguist.umass.edu |  | Research interests: Syntax, Semantics, Tree Adjoining Grammars, South Asian Languages |
| Lisa Green lgreen@linguist.umass.edu |  | Research interests: Syntax/Semantics with focus on African American English, syntactic variation, L1 Acquisition |
| Kyle Johnson kbj@linguist.umass.edu |  | Research interests: Syntax |
| Shota Momma snegishi@umass.edu |  | Research interests: Psycholinguistics, Syntax, Sentence Production |
| Peggy Speas (Emerita) pspeas@linguist.umass.edu |  | Research interests: Syntax, Morphology, Na-Dene Languages |
| Ellen Woolford woolford@linguist.umass.edu |  | Research interests: Restrictive theoretical accounts of universals and typological generalizations about case, agreement, and word order |
Graduate students
| Duygu Goksu dgoksu@umass.edu |  | Research interests: Syntax, semantics, phonology | Year started: 2018 |
| Kaden Holladay kholladay@umass.edu |  | Research interests: Morpho-phonology, Syntax-Semantics interface, Yup'ik, Finnish | Year started: 2017 |
| Shay Hucklebridge shucklebridg@umass.edu |  | Research interests: Semantics, Linguistic Fieldwork, and Language Revitalization/Documentation | Year started: 2017 |
| Kimberly Johnson kcjohnson@linguist.umass.edu |  | Research interests: Syntax, semantics, fieldwork | Year started: 2016 |
| Polina Kasyanova pkasyanova@umass.edu |  | Research interests: Syntax, Chukchi | Year started: 2020 |
| Jaieun Kim jaieunkim@umass.edu |  | Research interests: Language acquisition, syntax, Korean | Year started: 2015 |
| Mari Kugemoto mkugemoto@umass.edu |  | Research interests: Psycholinguistics, syntax, Japanese | Year started: 2020 |
| Zahra Mirrazi zmirrazirena@umass.edu | 🙂 | Research interests: Syntax, semantics | Year started: 2016 |
| Yosho Miyata ymiyata@umass.edu |  | Year started: 2019 |
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| Anissa Neal anneal@umass.edu |  | Research interests: Psycholinguistics, syntax, syntax-semantics interface | Year started: 2018 |
| Eva Neu eneu@umass.edu |  | Research interests: Syntax, Semantics, Philosophy of language | Year started: 2021 |
| Breanna Pratley bpratley@umass.edu |  | Year started: 2021 |
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| Jia Ren jiaren@umass.edu |  | Research interests: Syntax, Mandarin | Year started: 2020 |
| Ayana Whitmal awhitmal@umass.edu |  | Research interests: AAE, tense and aspect, contact relative clauses, Karuk agreement | Year started: 2019 |
Recent Dissertations
Caroline Anderson. 2021. There and Gone Again: Syntactic Structure In Memory
Michael Wilson. 2021. The Syntactic and Semantic Atoms of the Spray/load Alternation
Rong Yin. 2021. The Linearization of V(P)-doubling Constructions.
Christopher Hammerly. 2020. Person-based Prominence in Ojibwe
Rudmila-Rodica Ivan. 2020. TALKING ABOUT HER(SELF): AMBIGUITY AVOIDANCE AND PRINCIPLE B. A Theoretical and Psycholinguistic Investigation of Romanian Pronouns
Sakshi Bhatia. 2019 .Computing Agreement in a Mixed System
Thuy Bui. 2019. Binding and Coreference in Vietnamese
Tracy Conner. 2019. Divorce Licensing: Separate Criteria for Predicate and Clausal Ellipsis
Leland Kusmer. 2019. Optimal Linearization: Prosodic displacement in Khoekhoegowab and Beyond.
David Erschler. 2018. Typology of bizarre ellipsis varieties
Hsin-Lun Huang. 2018. The Head-Quarters of Mandarin Arguments.
Mike Clauss. 2017. The Form and Acquisition of Free Relatives.
Ethan Poole. 2017. Movement and the Semantic Type of Traces.
Shayne Slogget. 2017. When Errors aren’t: How Comprehenders Selectively violate Binding Theory.
Nick LaCara. 2016. Anaphora, Inversion, and Focus.
Stefan Keine. 2016. Probes and their Horizons.
Masashi Hashimoto. 2015. Experiencing in Japanese: The Experiencer Restriction across Clausal Types.
Jason Overfelt. 2015. Rightward Movement: A Study in Locality,
Noah Constant. 2014. Contrastive Topic: Meanings and Realizations.
Andrew Weir. 2013. Fragments and Clausal Ellipsis.
Annahita Farudi. 2013. Gapping in Farsi: A Crosslinguistic Investigation.
Emily Elfner. 2012. Syntax-Prosody Interactions in Irish.
Andrew Robert McKenzie. 2012. The Role of Contextual Restriction in Reference-Tracking.
Martin Walkow. 2012. Goals, Big and Small.