News and Events

We are as delighted as can be to announce that Shota Momma will be joining our faculty as Associate Professor of Linguistics this Fall!  Prof. Momma is a specialist in psycholinguistics and its interaction with linguistic theory — with a particular focus on the mechanisms of sentence production, an area in which he is a […]

Posted: May 11, 2026, 10:15 am

Speaker: Hani Al Naeem (MIT) Title: On the nature of emphasis spread in Jordanian Arabic Time: , 5pm - 6:30pm Location: 32-D831 Abstract: The phenomenon of emphasis spread (ES), a type of tongue root harmony in Arabic, is triggered by emphatics, coronal obstruents with a secondary posterior articulation near the upper pharyngeal wall. The most […]

Posted: May 11, 2026, 10:04 am

Speaker: Janet Pierrehumbert (University of Oxford) Title: LLMs can pass the Turing Test — are they intelligent? Time: Thursday, May 14, 12:30pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: In 1950, Turing proposed that if a person can not tell whether they are in conversation with another person or a computer algorithm, we can consider the algorithm […]

Posted: May 11, 2026, 10:02 am

This year, the 44th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL44) was held at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City on May 6-8. Some of our current students, faculty and alums presented their work: Tamari Berulava (2nd year): Shifting Identity: the Interaction of phi-features, Honorification and Indexical shift Michela Ippolito (PhD 2002)[University of Toronto] & […]

Posted: May 11, 2026, 10:00 am

Speaker: Daniar Kasenov (NYU) Title: Salvation by deletion in Russian LBE Time: Tuesday, May 12, 1:00pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Russian does not allow left branch extraction from NPs that are complements of P. Sluicing alleviates this restriction. I argue that the pattern is best explained by the Cyclic Linearization view of “island repair”: ungrammaticality […]

Posted: May 11, 2026, 10:00 am

Speaker: Thomas Truong and Karolin Kaiser (MIT) Title: Age is not just a number Time: Wednesday, May 6th, 1pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461   Abstract: We start from constructions where a proper name modifies a gradable adjective, as in (1). Eyal is Joe Biden old. While these examples initially may suggest a simple degree interpretation, […]

Posted: May 4, 2026, 10:25 am

Speaker: Christopher Bader (MIT)Title: Front Vowels are Palatal: Phonetic and Phonological EvidenceTime: , 5pm - 6:30pmLocation: 32-D831Abstract: Clements (1991) and Hume (1992) proposed that front vowels are coronal, rather than dorsal (Sagey 1986). But this is the wrong generalization, since it fails to explain the following contrast in Mandarin Chinese: *si, *ʂi, ɕi ‘west’ (西) […]

Posted: May 4, 2026, 10:04 am

Speaker: Haoming Li (MIT) Title: Conditional semantics for permission and weak necessity Time: Thursday, May 7, 12:30pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: The classic analyses of permission and weak necessity view them as existential and universal quantification over a modal base with one or two ordering sources. In this talk, I will advance the alternative […]

Posted: May 4, 2026, 10:02 am

The 35th meeting of Formal Approaches to Slaviv Languages was hosted by the Linguistics Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz from May 1-3, 2026. The following students and alums presented their work: Vlad Orlov (2nd year): Existential wh-words are still a question in Russian  Marijana Marelj & Ora Matushansky (PhD 1998)[CNRS]: Against length-determined […]

Posted: May 4, 2026, 10:00 am

Speaker: Edward Flemming (MIT) and Amy Li (MIT) Title: An optimization-based approach to phonetic grammar Time: Thursday, April 30, 12:30pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: A phonetic grammar maps phonological representations onto acoustic or articulatory trajectories. In the tonal domain, this involves mapping tone categories onto f0 trajectories that are aligned to the segmental string […]

Posted: April 27, 2026, 10:05 am

Speaker: Lorenzo Pinton (MIT) Title: Hurford Disjunctions without Entailment: A Mereological Approach Time: Wednesday, April 29th, 1pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461   Abstract: I present part of my ongoing work on Hurford disjunctions and the role of parthood in meaning. In the first part of the talk, I introduce novel data showing that predicates vary […]

Posted: April 27, 2026, 10:04 am

Speaker: Ioannis Katochoritis (MIT) Title: To Unlock is to (Re)Merge: Locality Domains, Intervention and Minimal Compliance Time: Tuesday, April 28, 1:00pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 This is Part II of a distant mid-March syntax square. Some things in the world have changed in-between, but not the need to undo locality domains. Recall:    Rackowski and […]

Posted: April 27, 2026, 10:03 am

Speaker: Jian-Leat Siah (UCLA) Title: How Language Experience Reshapes the P-Map: The Case of Final Nasalization in Serudung Murut Time: , 5pm - 6:30pm Location: 32-D831 Abstract: In this talk, I present my dissertation research testing Steriade (2001/2008)’s P-Map hypothesis, which posits that learners are biased toward alternations that minimize perceptual deviations between input and […]

Posted: April 27, 2026, 10:02 am

The 48th meeting of Generative Linguistics in the Old World (GLOW48) was held at the University of Siena on April 21-23, 2026. MIT linguistics was well respresented by the following current students and alums: Giovanni Roversi (Postdoc; PhD 2025) & Jéssica Mendes: Light attitudes, heavy complements: evidence from Äiwoo Eyal Marco (1st year), Ezer Rasin […]

Posted: April 27, 2026, 10:01 am

Speaker: Norvin Richards (MIT) Title: Long-distance agreement by proxy in Passamaquoddy-Wolastoqey Time: Tuesday, April 21, 1:00pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Passamaquoddy-Wolastoqey has long-distance agreement: the verb of a matrix clause can (optionally) agree with nominals in a complement clause, even if the complement clause appears to be a full-fledged tensed clause.  I will argue that […]

Posted: April 20, 2026, 12:20 pm

LEAP Workshop – Cora Lesure and Maya Honda Title: Communicating Your Research Time: Tuesdays  5pm – 6pm Location: 32-D461 We invite you to the LEAP (Linguistics Education and Pedagogy) workshop on Communicating Your Research. Here is the complete schedule of the four-session workshop: April 14th (last week): Defining the knowledge gap What does your audience know, and […]

Posted: April 20, 2026, 10:11 am

Speaker: Paul Smolensky (Microsoft/Johns Hopkins University) Title: Do the syntactic abilities of generative AI systems falsify fundamental principles of generative linguistics When: Friday, April 24th, 3:30-5pm  Where: 32-141  Do the impressive abilities of neural-network Large Language Models in generating rich, well-formed syntax falsify fundamental principles of generative linguistic theory? The answer I will argue for […]

Posted: April 20, 2026, 10:05 am

Speaker: Paul Smolensky (Microsoft/Johns Hopkins University) Title: “Generative Linguistics meets Generative AI” When: Wednesday, April 22nd, 1pm-2:30pm (Day 1) + Thursday, April 23rd, 12:30-2pm (Day 2)   Where: 32-D461   Abstract: Do the unprecedented syntactic abilities of modern generative AI systems — Large Language Models (LLMs) — falsify traditional generative principles of linguistic knowledge, given that […]

Posted: April 20, 2026, 10:03 am

The 62nd annual meeting of the Chicago Lingusitic Society (CLS62) was held on April 17-19, 2026. The following members of the MIT Linguistics community presented at the conference: Tamari Berulava (2nd year) & Paul Meisenbichler (3rd year): Parasitic Binding into Nested Definites Johanna Alstott (4th year): Next Bergül Soykan (4th year): Limitations on Meta Questions: […]

Posted: April 20, 2026, 10:01 am

Speaker: Yurika Aonuki (MIT) & William Pacheco (MIT) Title: Questions and conditionals with disjunction in Gitksan & My Language, My Tools: AI-Assisted Documentation of Kiːwɑ Keres Time: Thursday, April 16, 12:30pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 This week’s LingLunch will consist of two talks. Talk 1: Questions and conditionals with disjunction in Gitksan (Yurika Aonuki, MIT) […]

Posted: April 13, 2026, 10:06 am

Speaker: Vlad Orlov (MIT) Title: Observations on the Existential Uses of Interrogative Pronouns in Russian Time: Wednesday, April 14th, 1pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461   Abstract: Some of the interrogative pronouns in Russian can be used as indefinites in certain environments, which makes them quexistentials in the terminology of Hengeveld et al. 2023. The interrogative […]

Posted: April 13, 2026, 10:05 am

Speaker: Giovanni Roversi (MIT) & Jéssica Mendes (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) Title: Light-ish attitudes, heavy complements: the view from Äiwoo” (GLOW practice talk, LFRG take-over) Time: Tuesday, April 14, 1:00pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: Some attitude predicates in various unrelated languages have been reported to have variable flavor interpretations, covering doxastic (“think”), assertive (“say”), and bouletic […]

Posted: April 13, 2026, 10:04 am

LEAP Workshop 4/14 - Cora Lesure and Maya Honda Title: Communicating Your Research: Defining the Knowledge Gap Time: Tuesday April 14, 5pm - 6pm Location: 32-D461 We invite you to the first-ever LEAP (Linguistics Education and Pedagogy) workshop on Communicating Your Research. Across four one-hour sessions, we will explore how the task of communicating key […]

Posted: April 13, 2026, 10:04 am

On behalf of LEAP (Linguistics Education and Pedagogy), the department’s outreach effort to K-12 students, Christopher Legerme, Cora Lesure, Vincent Zu (MIT Chem E), and Jacob Kodner (Harvard Linguistics) designed and team-taught a Saturday high school linguistics course at Spring HSSP, an initiative of the student-run MIT ESP (Educational Studies Program). The six-week-long course, An […]

Posted: April 13, 2026, 10:03 am

The book entitled The Acquisition of Relativization by Suzanne Flynn and colleagues was recently published by Cambridge University Press in the series of Cambridge Studies in Linguistics. Congratulations, Suzanne! You can find the book here.

Posted: April 13, 2026, 10:01 am

We are excited to announce that the paper “Optimal Paradigms: A Challenge from Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic” by our first-year student Eyal Marco and alum Ezer Rasin (PhD 2018)[Tel Aviv University] was accepted to Linguistic Inquiry and published online. Congratulations, Eyal and Ezer! Here is the abstract: This paper reevaluates Optimal Paradigms (OP), an extension to Optimality […]

Posted: April 13, 2026, 10:01 am

Speaker: Amy Li (MIT) Title: The potential effect of phoneme inventory crowding on phonetic variation Time: Monday April 6, 5pm - 6:30pm Location: 32-D831 Abstract: Does the crowdedness of a phoneme inventory affect the variability of the realizations of its phonemes? In particular, does a more crowded phoneme inventory reduce the variability of its phonemes? […]

Posted: April 6, 2026, 10:12 am

Speaker: Joseph Sabbagh (University of Texas Arlington) Title: The Dynamic Existential in Tagalog Time: Tuesday, April 7, 1:00pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: This presentation discusses existential sentences based around a verbal existential predicate (magkaroon) in Tagalog. Such sentences are peculiar because, while they appear to be unaccusative, with a single DP argument projected as […]

Posted: April 6, 2026, 10:11 am

Speaker: Veneeta Dayal (Yale University) Title: “(In)definiteness Across Languages” When: Wednesday, April 8th, 1pm-2:30pm (Day 1) + Thursday, April 9th, 12:30-2pm (Day 2)   Where: 32-D461   Abstract: Given the complexity of article systems, the fact that as many languages lack either one or both articles poses interesting questions for universal grammar. Do article-less languages have […]

Posted: April 6, 2026, 10:10 am

Speaker: Veneeta Dayal (Yale University) Title: A Sortability-based Account of Anti-singularity in Questions When: Friday, April 10th, 3:30-5pm  Where: 32-141    Abstract:  This talk addresses three cases of anti-singularity in questions, illustrated in (1a)-(1c). They all convey that the speaker expects that the answer will name more than one individual: (1)   a. Which books did […]

Posted: April 6, 2026, 10:05 am

Event name: TU+11 (11th Workshop on Turkic and Languages in Contact with Turkic) Dates: April 11-12 Place: 56-114 Organizers: Bergül Soykan, Cynthia Zhong, Juan Cancel, Taieba Tawakoli, and Vladislav Orlov Link to the Program: https://turkicworkshop.github.io/tu11/program.html   Brief Introduction: TU+ is an annual workshop focusing on all aspects of linguistic research on Turkic languages, as well as on languages […]

Posted: April 6, 2026, 10:03 am

Congratulations to David Pesetsky on being named a 2026–27 SHASS Faculty Fellow! David is one of 12 professors selected for the new SHASS Faculty Fellows cohort: During his fellowship, [David Pesetsky will] investigate why there’s more than one kind of clause in the world’s languages. While linguists and researchers assume that clauses in most of […]

Posted: April 6, 2026, 10:01 am

We hear that our distinguished alum Abdul-Razak Sulemana (PhD 2021) has been promoted to the academic rank of Senior Lecturer at the University of Ghana.  Congratulations, Abdul-Razak!

Posted: April 6, 2026, 10:01 am

Speaker: Darya Kavitskaya (UC Berkeley)  Title: Vowel harmony domains in Turkic and Uralic: There and back again When: Friday, April 3rd, 3:30-5pm  Where: 32-141    Abstract:  Drawing on the architectural underpinnings of Lexical Phonology (Kiparsky 1982; Mohanan 1986), a body of research on the diachrony of phonological patterns has proposed that such patterns are unidirectional: […]

Posted: March 30, 2026, 10:10 am

Speaker: Weichao Yan (Beijing Foreign Studies University) Title: When Do Mandarin Conditionals Receive Counterfactual Readings? A Domain-Widening Perspective Time: Wednesday, April 1st, 1pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461   Abstract: In the spirit of von Fintel and Iatridou’s (2023) discussion of X-marking, this talk examines counterfactual interpretations in Mandarin conditionals from a domain-widening perspective. In Mandarin […]

Posted: March 30, 2026, 10:07 am

Speaker: Shigeru Miyagawa (MIT) Title: Birth of a Language in the Backlands of Brazil Time: Thursday, April 2, 12:30pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: It is assumed that in order to acquire a language, children must be exposed to a language during the critical period, which generally lasts until puberty. Here, we report on Cena, […]

Posted: March 30, 2026, 10:02 am

Speaker: Haoming Li (MIT) Title: Assertion and presupposition of change-of-state verbs across different aspects (Part 2) Time: Wednesday, March 18th, 1pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461   Abstract: Sudo (2012); Zehr & Schwarz (2018), among others, have drawn attention to the different discourse and projection behaviors of presuppositions that are entailed by the assertion (e.g., the […]

Posted: March 16, 2026, 12:34 pm

Title: To Unlock is to (Re)Merge: Locality Domains, Intervention and Minimal Compliance Speaker: Ioannis Katochoritis (MIT) Time: March 17, 2026,  1 pm - 2 pm  Place: 32-D461 Rackowski and Richards (2005) propose a Phase Unlocking operation: phases can be made transparent for extraction if they first Agree with a higher probe, which may then attract […]

Posted: March 16, 2026, 11:00 am

Speaker: Eyal Marco (MIT), joint work with Ezer Rasin (Tel-Aviv University) Title: On the nature of phonological cyclicity: Evidence from Nazarene Arabic Time: Monday, March 16th, 5pm - 6:30pm Location: 32-D831 Abstract: We present new evidence supporting the cycle as a grammatical mechanism in phonology. The evidence comes from the distribution of stress and vowel […]

Posted: March 16, 2026, 10:18 am

The semantics conference Theoretical Linguistics at Keio was held at Keio University on March 14-16, 2o26.  The following members of our community presented at the conference: Cooper Roberts (3rd year): Part is part (plus pragmatics) Viola Schmitt (faculty): Individuation across categories Adèle Hénot-Mortier (PhD 2025): “Remind-me” presuppositions with iterated Speech Acts Yasutada Sudo (PhD 2012)[UCL], Chris Davis […]

Posted: March 16, 2026, 10:08 am

The GLOW in Asia 2nd Workshop for Young Scholars was held at Nanzan University on March 13-15, 2026. Third-year student Cooper Roberts gave a talk titled “Honor omnivorously: The syntax of politeness in Kikai Amami”.  Second-year student Vlad Orlov presented a poster with Daria Belova (Institute of Linguistics RAS/HSE University, Moscow) titled “Detransitivization as agreement […]

Posted: March 16, 2026, 10:05 am

“Rujul Gandhi graduated from MIT in 2022, where she was a double major in Linguistics and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She’s currently researching speech at Harvard University, where she’s pursuing doctoral study in Speech & Hearing Bioscience. ‘I’m interested in the neural computations that underlie speech processing and perception,’ she says. […] “Was there […]

Posted: March 16, 2026, 10:01 am

Speaker: Yimei Xiang (Rutgers University) Title: Function alternations of the Mandarin particle ye: from ‘also’ to ‘even’ Time: Thursday, March 12, 12:30pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: The Mandarin adverb ye exhibits both a simple additive use (‘also’) and a scalar additive use (‘even’). This alternation is unlikely to be accidental: across genetically and typologically […]

Posted: March 9, 2026, 3:00 pm

Speaker: Haoming Li (MIT) Title: Assertion and presupposition of change-of-state verbs across different aspects Time: Wednesday, March 11th, 1pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461   Abstract: Sudo (2012); Zehr & Schwarz (2018), among others, have drawn attention to the different discourse and projection behaviors of presuppositions that are entailed by the assertion (e.g., the prior negative […]

Posted: March 9, 2026, 10:15 am

Speaker: Jordan Lachler (University of Alberta)  Title: “The Evolving Challenge of Skills Training for Intergenerational Language Sustainability”  When: Friday, March 13th, 3:30-5pm  Where: 32-141    Abstract:  The global language endangerment crisis has unfolded against a backdrop of accelerated and unprecedented changes to society, technology and the planet itself. These ever-shifting realities challenge linguists’ understanding of […]

Posted: March 9, 2026, 10:11 am

Speaker: Jian-Leat Siah (UCLA), joint work with Sam Zukoff and Feng-fan Hsieh Title: Resolving Reduplicative Opacity in Malay Nasal Spreading: An Argument for Base–Reduplicant Correspondence Theory Time: Monday, March 9th, 5pm - 6:30pm Location: 32-D831 Abstract: In Malay (Austronesian), nasality spreads iteratively and rightward from nasal consonants to following vowels and glides, but is blocked […]

Posted: March 9, 2026, 10:04 am

Congratulations to our very recent alum Omri Doron (PhD 2025),, who has received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship!  He will be leading a two-year project titled “Mapping complexity in Language” under the supervision of Pavel Caha at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic,  Omri is currently a visiting lecturer at UMass Amherst.

Posted: March 9, 2026, 10:03 am

Congratulations to finishing student Anastasia Tsilia, who has accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in semantics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign! 

Posted: March 9, 2026, 10:03 am

Congratulations to our alum Vincent Rouillard (PhD 2023), on his new position as Assistant Professor (Professeur adjoint) in the Département de langues, linguistique et traduction at Université Laval in Québec!!

Posted: March 9, 2026, 10:03 am

We are delighted to announce that two projects from MIT Linguistics have been selected for funding under the MIT Human Insight Collaborative (MITHIC) initiative, a new program in MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences: Elise Newman and Norvin Richards have received funding for a project entitled “Passamaquoddy-Wolastoqey Research, Revitalization and Documentation” (PWRRD, pronounced […]

Posted: March 9, 2026, 10:01 am

Speaker: Alma Frischoff (MIT) Title: Non-maximal readings of definite plurals with positive and negative predicates Time: Wednesday, March 4th, 1pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461   Abstract: I discuss the availability of non-maximal readings of sentences with definite plurals, focusing on antonym pairs of predicates. First, I draw attention to the observation that antonyms like clean/dirty and healthy/sick […]

Posted: March 2, 2026, 11:10 am

Speaker: Dean McHugh (University of Edinburgh) Title: Conditional Modality with Alternatives Time: Thursday, March 5, 12:30pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: This talk brings together two ideas. First, that statements under a modal are interpreted as conditional antecedents. ‘Possibly A’ states that if A were true, there would be some case where the relevant ideals […]

Posted: March 2, 2026, 11:02 am

MITILI celebrates International Mother Language Day with an online panel featuring Indigenous scholars and practitioners reflecting on learning, teaching, and practice in linguistics and Indigenous language education. Short presentations will be followed by moderated and open Q&A.   Featured speakers include: Devon Denny (Diné Bizaad / Navajo), MITILI alum (SM ’22) and PhD student at UC […]

Posted: February 23, 2026, 11:06 am

Speaker: Junshu Jin and Michael Kenstowicz (MIT)Title: Perception of English Lexical Stress by 2nd-Language LearnersTime: Monday, February 23rd, 5pm - 6:30pmLocation: 32-D831Abstract: In this presentation we briefly review two earlier studies on the perception of lexical stress contrasts in English by native Mandarin speakers. We then discuss the findings of Jin & Zheng’s (2025) study comparing […]

Posted: February 23, 2026, 11:04 am

Speaker: Christopher Legerme Title: Transitive alternations and the syntax-phonology interface of Haitian Creole and Mauritian Creole Time: Tuesday, February 24th, 2026.  1 pm - 2 pm Location: 32-D461   Abstract: The verbal morphology of French Creoles is systematically sensitive to transitive argument alternations; the LONG FORM of transitive verbs is generally required when their internal […]

Posted: February 23, 2026, 11:00 am

Speaker: Jessica Coon (McGill University)  Title: “Reconsidering animacy hierarchy effects in Mayan: Experimental evidence from Ch’ol” (presenting joint work with Stefan Keine (UCLA), Juan Vázquez Álvarez (CIMSUR-UNAM), and Michael Wagner (McGill)) When: Friday, February 20th, 3:30-5pm  Where: 32-141    Abstract:  Like many other Mayan languages, Ch’ol has been described as restricting the combination of 3rd […]

Posted: February 17, 2026, 11:05 am

Speaker: David Pesetsky (MIT) Title: A Sparse Theory of Argument Alternations Time: Thursday, February 19th, 12:30pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: Argument alternations such as active~passive are common in the languages of the world, with several stable properties. Consequently, we should seek a maximally sparse account of such alternations that does not stipulate their existence […]

Posted: February 17, 2026, 11:02 am

  Speaker: Shigeru Miyagawa (MIT), Despina Oikonomou (University of Crete), Onur Özsoy (University of Cologne), Caroline Heycock (University of Edinburgh), Giorgios Vardakis (University of Padova), Rumeysa Bektaş (Tokat University) Title: Condition C amelioration effects in wh-movement: An interaction between pronominal type and d-linking Time: Tuesday, February 10th, 1pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: While wh-movement […]

Posted: February 9, 2026, 11:08 am

Speaker: Amir Anvari (MIT)Title: How to be ignorantTime: Wednesday, February 11th, 1pm - 2pmLocation: 32-D461Abstract: I discuss two observations that are puzzling for a rather plausible, pragmatic conception of the etiology of ignorance inferences. The first is that certain sentences do not trigger certain ignorance inferences even in highly favorable contexts (Feinmann 2023). The second […]

Posted: February 9, 2026, 11:06 am

Speaker: Si Berrebi (MIT)Title: Category mergers are irrecoverable even with robust distributional evidenceTime: Monday, February 9th, 5pm - 6:30pmLocation: 32-D831Abstract: Can a covert phonological category be learned based on the distribution, without phonetic evidence? Although this idea was debated extensively, it has yet to be tested whether individual speakers have successfully acquired covert categories. I […]

Posted: February 9, 2026, 11:04 am

On 21 January, 2026, our 4th-year student Bergül Soykan gave a talk at UCL. You can read the abstract here. See below for pictures of Bergül with some of our alums (The top photo from right to left: Yasu, Margaret, Adèle and Bergül)!

Posted: February 2, 2026, 11:05 am

Later in January, Vlad Orlov, Cooper Roberts and Norvin Richard went to Maine for the winter Passamaquoddy group trip!

Posted: February 2, 2026, 11:03 am

Course announcements in this post: Topics in Syntax (24.956) Topics in Experimental Phonology (24.967) Topics in Semantics (24.979) 24.956: Topics in Syntax Modeling phonological typology Instructor: Sabine Iatridou, Elise Nerman, David Pesetsky Time: Monday, 2pm-5pm Room: 32-D461 This class will explore what is known and what is unknown about the internal and external syntax of nominals. We […]

Posted: February 2, 2026, 11:01 am

This year, the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America was held in New Orleans from January 8-11, 2026. Several MIT students and alums gave presentations: James Cooper Roberts (3rd year): An Agreement-interpretation puzzle concerning Indo-European fraction partitives Adèle Hénot-Mortier (PhD 2025)[Queen Mary University of London]: Oddness, logical compatibility and granularity Devon Denny (SM 2022)[UCSD]: […]

Posted: February 2, 2026, 11:01 am

Dear Whamit friends, As is traditional, Whamit will be going on hiatus as our classes and other regular activities wind down at the end of the year.  The Spring semester begins on February 2, and we will resume regular posts then.   Rest assured, of course, that we will be there for you with any […]

Posted: December 15, 2025, 11:00 am

Speaker: Amanda Michel (MIT) Title: A Variable Account of Norwegian Stress Time: Tuesday, December 8th, 5pm - 6:30pm Location: 32-D831 Abstract: The stress system of Norwegian has traditionally been argued to be fixed/predictable with a robust set of exceptions. Much of the analysis of Norwegian stress is based on loanwords, as the inventory of native […]

Posted: December 8, 2025, 11:04 am

The 6th joint meeting between the Acoustic Society of America and the Acoustic Society of Japan took place at Honolulu from 1-5 December, 2025. Several students and alums presented their work: Amy Li (2nd year): A phonetic correlate of velar palatalization: Shorter front cavity Na-Young Ryu and Suyeon Yun (PhD 2016) [Chungnam National Univ.]: Perceptual […]

Posted: December 8, 2025, 11:03 am

On 1-2 December 2025, the 7th Edinburgh Symposium on Historical Phonology was hosted by The University of Edinburgh. Our 4th-year PhD student Juan Cancel presented his poster, entitled The diachronic asymmetry of nasal apocope between nominal and verbal paradigms in Nganasan! You can read the abstract here.

Posted: December 8, 2025, 11:02 am

Speaker: Sabine Iatridou (MIT) Title: Superlatives meet Definiteness in Bulgarian and Greek Time: Thursday, December 11, 12:30pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: The aim of this paper (joint work with Artemis Alexiadou and Roumyana Pancheva) is to enrich the debate on the nature of absolute and relative readings of superlatives with data from Bulgarian and […]

Posted: December 8, 2025, 11:02 am

The conference “Ontology as Structured by the Interface with Semantics” (OASIS) 5 was held at University of Edinburgh on 3-5 December, 2025. Our current 3rd-year PhD student Cooper Roberts gave a presentation, entitled “Part is part (plus pragmatics)”. Our recent alum Filipe Hisao Kobayashi (PhD, 2023) also presented his work on “Building individual concepts structurally”.

Posted: December 8, 2025, 11:01 am

On November 22rd and 23rd, Hani Al Naeem, Christopher Legerme, Cora Lesure, Vincent Zu (MIT Chemical Engineering postdoctoral associate), and Jacob Kodner (Harvard Linguistics graduate student) taught over 50 ninth through twelfth grade students at Splash, a weekend extravaganza of courses organized by MIT ESP (Educational Studies Program). Hani and Christopher offered “Sounds in Motion: […]

Posted: December 8, 2025, 11:00 am

Speaker: Angelika Kratzer (UMass Amherst) Title: “On Sayings and Rumors” When: Friday, December 5th, 3:30-5pm  Where: 32-141   Abstract: The work presented in this talk is part of a bigger project that tries to derive the distinctive properties of attitude ascriptions and speech reports from a pool of recurring building blocks that combine and recombine to […]

Posted: December 1, 2025, 2:01 pm

Speaker: Juan Cancel (MIT) Title: Cross-Categorial Syncretisms: Theoretical Predictions and Empirical Observations Time: Thursday, December 4th, 5pm - 6pm Location: 32-D769 Abstract: Syncretisms and their generalizations have been the topic of much discussion in the morphological literature for a few years already (ex: Caha 2009, Starke 2017, Zompì 2023, etc). Nonetheless, a kind of syncretism […]

Posted: December 1, 2025, 11:10 am

Speaker: Tam Berulava (MIT)Title: Case-Matching Effects in Long-Distance Wh-Questions in GeorgianTime: Tuesday, December 2nd, 1pm - 2pmLocation: 32-D461Abstract: I will present an ongoing project on long-distance wh-questions in Georgian, focusing on the interaction between cross-clausal wh-movement and case. Building on recent claims that Georgian lacks true cross-clausal wh-movement and instead uses only proleptic question constructions, […]

Posted: December 1, 2025, 11:08 am

Speaker: Johanna Alstott (MIT) Title: A cautionary note on word learning paradigms and presupposition triggering Time: Thursday, December 4, 12:30pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: Cross-linguistically, predicates with both initial-state and change-of-state components tend to encode them as presupposition and assertion, respectively. Bade et al. (2024) argue on the basis of a series of artificial […]

Posted: December 1, 2025, 11:02 am

Speaker: Iva Kovač (Vienna/UMass Amherst) Title: Scope in NPI licensing Time: Wednesday, December 3rd, 12:30pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: Licensing of weak NPIs like any is subject to at least three scope-related constraints: certain elements, such as every, may not take scope between the NPI and its licenser (Linebarger 1980, 1987), the NPI must […]

Posted: December 1, 2025, 11:02 am

Speaker: Paul Meisenbichler (MIT)Title: Reference to individuals across worlds and constraints on de re phenomena (Part 2)Time: Wednesday, November 26th, 1pm - 2pmLocation: 32-D461Abstract: I will continue our discussion from November 12 about how certain ideas from counterpart theory (CT, see Lewis 1986) could contribute to our understanding of de re/de dicto phenomena. The central […]

Posted: November 24, 2025, 11:06 am

Speaker: Heidi Durresi (MIT)Title: Comparing different predictions of learnability on typologyTime: Monday, November 24th, 5pm - 6:30pmLocation: 32-D831Abstract: Stanton (2016) is not only an argument for learnability shaping typology, but also that the Gradual Learning Algorithm (GLA; Boersma 1997, Magri 2012) is the vehicle for it. In this talk, I will discuss some preliminary ideas […]

Posted: November 24, 2025, 11:04 am

The Southern New England Workshop in Semantics (SNEWS) took place at UMass Amherst this Saturday. The following MIT students presented: Seva Masliukov (1st year): Puzzles of actional composition in an atelicity-marking language Vlad Orlov (2nd year): Reciprocal alternation and bound de-re readings Alma Frischoff (2nd year): Type-label comparison and Type Economy Principle

Posted: November 24, 2025, 11:01 am

Speaker: Pavel Caha (Masaryk University) Title: “Allomorphy in Nanosyntax” When: Wednesday, November 19th, 1pm-2:30pm (Day 1) + Thursday, November 20th, 12:30-2pm (Day 2)   Where: 32-D461   Abstract:  Syntax is a combinatorial system which, in the simplest case, takes two objects and joins them together. E.g., when an excessive marker (too) combines with an adjective (tall), […]

Posted: November 17, 2025, 12:39 pm

Speaker: Pavel Caha (Masaryk University) Title: “Spatial cases in Tsez: a nanosyntactic analysis” When: Friday, November 21st, 3:30-5pm  Where: 32-141   Abstract: The talk investigates spatial case marking in Tsez. Comrie and Polinsky (1998) argue for the decomposition of these forms into at least two morphemes (roughly Path and Place), and optionally others, like the […]

Posted: November 17, 2025, 12:00 pm

Speaker: James Cooper Roberts (MIT) Title: Part is part (plus pragmatics) Time: Thursday, November 20th, 5pm - 6pm Location: 32-D769 Abstract: In this work, I argue that the natural language item part (and its translational equivalents) is the same as the mereological notion of PROPER PART, full stop. While this seems trivially true, state-of-the-art semantics […]

Posted: November 17, 2025, 11:10 am

Speaker: Rotsuprit Saengthong (MIT)Title: Clause Size Reduction by Projection FeatureTime: Tuesday, November 18th, 1pm - 2pmLocation: 32-D461Abstract: I will present an ongoing project on clausal complementation. I have observed that when tested with restructuring diagnostics as used in Wurmbrand (2001), clauses containing functional elements (e.g., C and T) behave like full CPs in some environments, […]

Posted: November 17, 2025, 11:08 am

Speaker: Amy Li (MIT)Title: A phonetic correlate of velar palatalization: shorter front cavityTime: Monday, November 17th, 5pm - 6:30pmLocation: 32-D831Abstract: I will start this talk by practicing presenting the poster that I will bring to the ASA (poster abstract below). Velar palatalization is a common sound change involving a velar stop becoming a palatal affricate […]

Posted: November 17, 2025, 11:04 am

Posted: November 12, 2025, 11:11 am

Speaker: Daniar Kasenov (NYU) Title: Nonce word wellformedness and abstract URs: the case of Russian yers Time: Thursday, November 13th, 5pm - 6pm Location: 32-D769 Abstract: Nonce word studies are part of the toolbox to probe productivity, especially of non-automatic phonological alternations, such as Russian vowel-zero alternations (Russian yers). Existing work (Gouskova, Becker 2013; Becker, […]

Posted: November 12, 2025, 11:09 am

Speaker: Karthik Durvasula (Michigan State University)  Title: “On deriving different types of incomplete neutralisation” When: Friday, November 14th, 3:30-5pm  Where: 32-141    Abstract:  Research over the last few decades has consistently questioned the sufficiency of abstract/discrete phonological representations based on putative misalignments between predictions from such representations and observed experimental results. Here, I’ll first suggest […]

Posted: November 12, 2025, 11:08 am

Speaker: Paul Meisenbichler (MIT) Title: Reference to individuals across worlds and constraints on de re phenomena Time: Wednesday, November 12th, 1pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: In this LFRG, I want to lead a (mostly informal) discussion on the role that counterpart theory (CT, see Lewis 1986) should play in our approaches to de re/de […]

Posted: November 12, 2025, 11:06 am

A much-missed visitor from the 2024-2025 academic year, Adam Przepiórkowski, organized this year’s meeting of Generative Linguistics in Poland (GLiP), with MIT alums and faculty as invited speakers.  Susi Wurmbrand (University of Salzburg) spoke on “Syntax as a function: A Redundancy and Deficiency approach to Grammar within linguistic behavior”;  Jonathan Bobaljik (Harvard) spoke about “Old […]

Posted: November 12, 2025, 11:00 am

We were delighted to learn that our illustrious alum Ivona Kučerová (PhD 2007) is the recipient of the 2026 C.L. Baker award from the Linguistic Society of America.  To quote from the LSA’s announcement: “The C.L. Baker Award recognizes excellence in research in the area of syntactic theory on the part of a mid-career scholar. […]

Posted: November 12, 2025, 11:00 am

Speaker: Ogloo Jurkhaichin (MIT) Title: The Nature of ‘Edge’: Evidence from Cross-clausal A-movement in Mongolian Time: Thursday, November 6th, 5pm - 6pm Location: 32-D769 Abstract: Syntactic operations are bounded by phases, in which the edge is typically taken to be the highest specifier (Fox & Pesetsky 2005; Rackowski & Richards 2005; Bošković 2016, a.o.). In […]

Posted: November 3, 2025, 11:10 am

Speaker: James Morley (MIT)Title: An “Only-You” restriction in Chamorro and the problems it poses for the theory of hierarchy effectsTime: Tuesday, November 4th, 1pm - 2pmLocation: 32-D461Abstract: This talk investigates a person-animacy restriction - henceforth PAR - in Chamorro (Malayo-Polynesian; Austronesian), previously reported in Chung (1998, 2014, 2020) but which has otherwise been subject to […]

Posted: November 3, 2025, 11:08 am

Speaker: Thomas Truong (MIT)Title: Plural superlatives and cumulativityTime: Wednesday, November 5th, 1pm - 2pmLocation: 32-D461Abstract: In this talk I will present some ongoing work on the interactions between plurals and superlatives. To do so, I examine a unique reading of sentences containing plurals and superlatives. (1) Rafa climbed each of the tallest mountains that his […]

Posted: November 3, 2025, 11:06 am

Speaker: Gasser Elbanna (Harvard)Title: A model of speech recognition reproduces behavioral signatures of human speech perception and reveals mechanismsTime: Monday, November 3rd, 5pm - 6:30pmLocation: 32-D831Abstract: Humans dexterously extract meaning from variable acoustic signals and can faithfully repeat back novel utterances—hallmarks of spoken communication. Speech perception is thought to subserve these downstream tasks via transforming […]

Posted: November 3, 2025, 11:04 am

Speaker: Cooper Roberts (MIT) Title: A rational solution to an agreement-interpretation puzzle Time: Thursday, November 6 12:30pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: In some Indo-European languages, a fraction partitive (FP) which embeds a plural DP licenses an optional-agreement phenomenon—-in the appropriate syntactic position, an agreeing predicate can copy the features of either the fraction (1b) […]

Posted: November 3, 2025, 11:02 am

Speaker: Chelsea Tang (MIT) Title: Reduplicative Opacity in Gĩkũyũ: Evidence for Backcopying and BR-Distantial Faithfulness Time: Monday, October 27th, 5pm - 6:30pm Location: 32-D831   Abstract: Backcopying is an overapplication phenomenon where the reduplicant undergoes a phonological process, then the base “copies back” from the reduplicant even when the environment is not met in the base. The […]

Posted: October 27, 2025, 10:15 am

Speaker: Yvette Yi-Chi Wu (Harvard) Title: Verb classes and affix ordering in Seediq Time: Thursday, October 30th, 5pm - 6pm Location: 32-D769 Abstract: This talk looks at verbal morphology in Seediq, with supplementary data from other Formosan languages. I will focus on the ordering of “voice” morphology with respect to derivational and TAM morphology, which […]

Posted: October 27, 2025, 10:10 am

Speaker: Vsevolod Masliukov (MIT)Title: Participial Complementation in RussianTime: Tuesday, October 28th, 1pm - 2pmLocation: 32-D461Abstract: In this talk I will present a syntactic analysis of Russian sentences such as (1), which feature participles marked with the so-called ‘Predicate instrumental case’ (Bailyn 2001). I will argue that these participial clauses are arguments with a PredP (small […]

Posted: October 27, 2025, 10:08 am

Speaker: Bergül Soykan (MIT)Title: Limitations on meta questions: insights from TurkishTime: Wednesday, October 29th, 1pm - 2pmLocation: 32-D461Abstract: In this ongoing work, I present data on the basic patterns of Turkish meta questions (MQs) and show that Turkish appears to allow meta-meta questions as in (1), which Trinh, Fox, and Bassi (2025) predict to be […]

Posted: October 27, 2025, 10:06 am