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grad program
undergrad program
courses
faculty
grad students
recent graduates
underling
student resources
spring colloquium
newsletter
mbecker (at) email.unc.edu
Office: 301 Smith Building, (919) 962-5009
Ph.D. 2000, University of California, Los Angeles
Misha Becker's main area of interest is psycholinguistics and first language acquisition, in particular the acquisition of syntax in children. Her research deals mainly with the development of functional structure (e.g. inflection and finiteness) in child grammar, and her current work focuses on the acquisition of raising verbs (e.g. 'seem') and raising constructions. Her other interests include cognitive development, learnability theory, and computational models of language acquisition.
hendrick (at) email.unc.edu
Office: 105 Smith Building
Ph.D. 1979, University of California, Los Angeles
Randall Hendrick specializes in syntactic theory and the way that syntax coordinates with semantics on the one hand and morphology on the other. Currently he is working on classes of predicates and their relations to events. Syntactic reflexes of the semantic distinction between categorical and thetic judgments are part of this project, as is the syntactic domain of existential closure. This work stems from his fieldwork on Polynesian and Celtic languages. It relates as well to some psycholinguistic experimentation designed to distinguish properties of derivations from properties of representations.
davidmm (at) unc.edu
Office: 307 Smith Building
Ph.D. 2001, State University of New York at Albany
David Mora-Marin, affiliated with both the Linguistics Department and the Duke-UNC Consortium for Latin American Studies, specializes in historical linguistics and the epigraphic study of ancient Mayan hieroglyphic inscriptions. Currently he is working on the linguistic structure (e.g. morphosyntax, pragmatics) and historical development of Mayan texts, such as the identification of the language that was used as the standard of Classic Lowland Mayan texts (A.D. 200-900) and the nature of Mayan orthographic conventions. He is very much interested in the origin of Mayan writing, its relationship to other Mesoamerican scripts (e.g. Zapotec, Epi-Olmec), and the sociocultural factors that served as the background for the development of writing. This year he is teaching Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Historical Linguistics, and Survey of Mesoamerican Languages.
moreton (at) email.unc.edu
Office: 101 Smith Building
Ph.D. 2002, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Why are some phonological patterns much more frequent than others? Two main factors have been proposed as explanations: Either learners are more receptive to some patterns than others, or subtle phonetic asymmetries systematically skew the errors made in inter-generational transmission. Elliott Moreton's research focuses on these factors and their interaction in shaping phonological typology.
pertsova (at) email.unc.edu
Office: 308 Smith Building
Ph.D. 2007, University of California, Los Angeles
Kayta Pertsova's research lies at the intersection of theoretical linguistics, computational modeling and psycholinguistics. In particular, she is interested in questions related to computational models of learning morphology, complexity metrics of linguistic patterns, lexical storage and organization, and language evolution.
ptr (at) email.unc.edu
Office: Dey 441, (919) 962-0326
Ph.D. 1980, University of Michigan
Paul Roberge's areas of specialization are Germanic languages, sociohistorical linguistics, and language contact. His current research involves a reconstruction of the Dutch-based pidgin that was the spoken by enslaved peoples and indigenes at the Cape of Good Hope ca. 1658-1850, ideology and standardization in the history of Afrikaans, and a long-term project, viz. The Cambridge History of the Germanic Languages (with Robert B. Howell and Joseph C. Salmons).
jlsmith (at) email.unc.edu
Office: 309 Smith Building, (919) 962-1474
Ph.D. 2002, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Jennifer Smith specializes in phonological theory and the phonology of Japanese and other East Asian languages. Broadly speaking, she is interested in the nature and structure of phonological constraints. Specific projects include positional constraints, syllable structure and sonority, loanword phonology, phonological differences between words of different lexical categories, and intonational phonology in the Fukuoka dialect of Japanese.
terryjm (at) email.unc.edu
Office: 303 Smith Building, (919) 962-4996
Ph.D. 2003, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Michael Terry's principal area of interest is natural language semantics. His current research involves investigating the formal semantic properties of Tense and Aspect in African-American English. His other areas of interest include negation, and definiteness and specificity.
melchert (at) humnet.ucla.edu Ph.D. 1977, Harvard University
Connie Eble, English Linguistics
Lawrence Feinberg, Slavic Linguistics
Peter C. Gordon, Psychology and Psycholinguistics
Jennifer Arnold, Psychology and Psycholinguistics
Larry King, Spanish and Portuguese Linguistics
William Lycan, Philosophy of Language and Semantics
Dean Pettit, Philosophy of Language and Mind
Patrick O'Neill, Celtic Languages