Research Areas

Research in Linguistics is focused, collaborative, and theoretically ecumenical. While the traditional theoretical subdisciplines of phonology, semantics and pragmatics, and syntax and morphology remain dominant loci in the department, a long-standing commitment to empirically-rich investigations has led to a broadening in its research—to include other core areas of inquiry (phonetics and psycholinguistics) as well as diverse methodologies for investigating language (e.g., computational and experimental methodologies)—without sacrificing theoretical rigor.

The department retains an abiding faith in whole language investigation, maintaining long-standing interests in understudied and endangered languages, including Austronesian, Irish, Mayan, Mongolian, Oto-Manguean, and Uto-Aztecan, as well as more dominant language groups, such as Chinese, Germanic, Hungarian, Iranian, Japanese, Romance, Semitic, Slavic, and Turkic. In addition, many faculty and students are united by interests beyond the traditional theoretical disciplines, often sharing a methodological focus, including in psycholinguistics and real-time processing broadly construed, in computational modeling, and in sociolinguistics, including questions of power and gender dynamics, indexical features, and within-language variation.

Much of this research occurs within several labs and other research groups, which meet actively throughout the academic year. These research subunits are organized under the umbrella of the Linguistics Research Center (LRC), the part of the department which manages lab space and other research-related resources, as well as coordinates visiting researchers. It also supports the department’s externally-funded research projects, which receive funding from agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Phonology and Phonetics

The approach to phonology and phonetics at UCSC is broad, reflecting our view that one can learn from bringing to bear diverse methodologies: formal, functional, experimental. These are complementary approaches to linguistics, and we often try to integrate them in our research. In the area of phonology, research ranges from prosody to segmental effects, generally in the theoretical framework of Optimality Theory. Much of our work is grounded in deep empirical investigations into particular languages such as German, Irish, Japanese, Mayan (Kaqchikel and Uspanteko), Polish, and Russian, and much of it explores the relationship between phonology and either morphology or phonetics. Research in phonetics ranges from exploration of category formation to the role of perception in phonology, and to the social implications of phonetic properties. Current work by faculty and students focuses on prosody and accentuation, the nature of higher prosodic categories and structures, foot-based processes, the perceptual bases of contrast and processes, phonetic cue learning and category formation, vocal attractiveness, and the emergent nature of phonological patterns.

Artifacts from our work

Syntax and Morphology

The core goal of research by the syntax and morphology group at UCSC is a precise theory of the structure of sentences and words. We focus on core questions in syntactic and morphological theory and their interaction with other aspects of language ability: semantics, prosody, and real-time production and comprehension. Data diversity and linguistic diversity are important guideposts in this endeavor. We seek insights from a variety of sources: from one-on-one fieldwork with consultants to corpus research to experimental studies of syntax and language processing. We place particular emphasis on analytic depth and on the investigation of understudied (often endangered) languages. Current research features investigation into Austronesian, Gaelic, Iranian, Mayan, Mongolian, Semitic, Turkic, Uto-Aztecan, and Zapotec (Oto-Manguean) languages.

Semantics and Pragmatics

Common to work in semantics and pragmatics at UCSC is a formal approach to theoretically relevant problems grounded in detailed investigation of empirical data coming from a variety of languages. A thread uniting the research of the faculty and students here is attention to both semantic and pragmatic factors with particular emphasis on understanding language in context. Research topics, theoretical tools and languages considered are quite diverse. Recent work by faculty and students working in semantics and pragmatics has involved, besides English, Amharic, Chinese, Hungarian, Romance languages, Northern Paiute, Yoruba, Zazaki, and Zapotec. Topics currently investigated by faculty and students are distributivity, number interpretation, indefinites, propositional attitude predicates, affective language, noun phrase scope, and the semantics and pragmatics of polarity particles across languages. See the faculty members’ and dissertators’ websites below for more details.

Artifacts from our Work

Psycholinguistics

The recently expanded laboratory infrastructure in the Department of Linguistics at UCSC supports our vision for broadening the ways in which we answer questions about language and the mind. From broad-scale experiments on the web to the creation of novel corpora, to state-of-the-art ultrasound and eye-tracking studies, researchers at UCSC now have a diverse toolkit with which to understand the mental mechanisms that enable language.