The Department of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania has a longstanding reputation for using diverse kinds of empirical data to advance linguistic theory. Known for its interdisciplinary research, the department not only spans the subfields of linguistics but also connects with many other fields in cognitive science and beyond. To learn more about the wide range of research we’re doing, click on the links below.
American Sign Language (ASL) is used by deaf communities throughout the United States and parts of Canada. ASL is a naturally formed, complex language that relies on manual and facial expressions. ASL, like other signed languages from around the world, uses expressive properties to produce language in three dimensions.
Jami Fisher - American Sign Language; Deaf Studies
Computational linguistics is a field at the intersection of linguistics and computer science concerned with applying methods from the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning to problems involving language.
Mark Liberman - Phonetics, prosody, natural language processing, speech communication
Mitch Marcus (Computer and Information Science) - Natural language processing, corpus-based and statistical models for NLP
Charles Yang - Language acquisition, language change, computational linguistics, morphology, psycholinguistics
Historical linguistics is a subfield of linguistics in which an investigation of the history of languages is used to learn about how languages are related, how languages change, and what languages were like hundreds and even thousands of years ago—even before written records of a language.
Donald Ringe - Historical linguistics, Indo-European, morphology
Beatrice Santorini - Syntax, Germanic linguistics, language change
Stephen Tinney (Asian and Middle Eastern Studies) - Sumerian; Mesopotamian language and literature
Charles Yang - Language acquisition, language change, computational linguistics, morphology, psycholinguistics
Language is extremely complex, but children already know most of the rules for their native language(s) before five years old, without being explicitly taught. At Penn, the Schuler Laboratory and the Language & Cognition Lab are especially interested in why children seem to be so much better at language learning than adults. We want to find out whether there is something different about the way children learn or the way their brains are organized that makes language learning come naturally to them.
Anna Papafragou - Experimental semantics and pragmatics, language acquisition, language and cognition
Kathryn Schuler - Language acquisition, psycholinguistics
Charles Yang - Language acquisition, language change, computational linguistics, morphology, psycholinguistics
Language evolution is the application of evolutionary theory to the study of language. We tend to think of evolution as being mainly a process that affects biological populations, but when it comes to the evolution of language we also need to take cultural evolution into account. The Cultural Evolution of Language Laboratory focuses on how these mechanisms shape language.
Robin Clark - Mathematical linguistics and formal semantics, game theory, acquisition and learnability, formal syntax
Gareth Roberts - Language evolution, language change, language variation, cultural evolution, experimental semiotics, social interaction
Morphology can be thought of roughly as the study of the structure of the parts of words, including for instance the nature of affixes. At Penn, morphology research spans into the syntax-morphology interface, in particular with a distributed morphology perspective in which morphology is thought to have the same constituent structures as at the level of syntax. The Embick Laboratory also uses experimental methods to investigate questions about lexical and morphological representation and processing.
Eugene Buckley - Formal phonology, phonology-morphology interaction, phonological explanation, Native American and Ethio-Semitic linguistics
David Embick - Syntax, morphology, morphology-syntax interface, neurolinguistics
Julie Anne Legate - Syntax, morphology, morphology-syntax interface, language acquisition
Mark Liberman - Phonetics, prosody, natural language processing, speech communication
Rolf Noyer - Theoretical phonology, morphology, morphosyntax, generative metrics, Huave, Mansi
Donald Ringe - Historical linguistics, Indo-European, morphology
Martin Salzmann - Syntax, morphology, morphology-syntax interface, syntax-semantics interface, microvariation
Charles Yang - Language acquisition, language change, computational linguistics, morphology, psycholinguistics
Phonetics is the science of speech. It studies the articulation, acoustics, and perception of speech sounds. Our Phonetics Laboratory explores all of these areas.
Mark Liberman - Phonetics, prosody, natural language processing, speech communication
Jianjing Kuang - Multidimensionality of tonal contrasts, phonation, laryngeal articulation across languages, computational modeling, and prosody
Phonology is the study of the mental representations of the sound units of language and the rules that govern how mental phonemes are realized in various contexts. Phonology is also concerned with metrical and syllable structure.
Eugene Buckley - Formal phonology, phonology-morphology interaction, phonological explanation, Native American and Ethio-Semitic linguistics
Mark Liberman - Phonetics, prosody, natural language processing, speech communication
Rolf Noyer - Theoretical phonology, morphology, morphosyntax, generative metrics, Huave, Mansi
Psycholinguistics uses experimental methods to investigate the cognitive processes behind language comprehension and production, their development, and the mental representations of linguistic knowledge in children. Research at Penn focuses on adult and child sentence processing and on lexical representation in adults and infants.
Delphine Dahan (Psychology) - Psycholinguistics, spoken-language comprehension, lexical representation and processing)
David Embick - Syntax, morphology, morphology-syntax interface, neurolinguistics
Anna Papafragou - Experimental semantics and pragmatics, language acquisition, language and cognition
Gareth Roberts - Language evolution, language change, language variation, cultural evolution, experimental semiotics, social interaction
Timothy Roberts - Neurolinguistics; neuroimaging; auditory processing of language; language and autism
Dan Swingley (Psychology) - Psycholinguistics, word recognition and lexical representation in infants and young children
John Trueswell (Psychology) - Language processing, eye movements in reading, visual perception
Charles Yang - Language acquisition, language change, computational linguistics, morphology, psycholinguistics
Semantics research is about how the meaning of a sentence is determined from its parts and the way the parts are put together. Semantics at Penn focuses on several new approaches to the field, including LTAG semantics and underspecification as well as the application of game theory. In addition, the Schwarz Laboratory uses eye-tracking and other psycholinguistic methods to investigate natural language meaning in context. Furthermore, Anna Papafragou’s Language and Cognition Lab conducts research in experimental semantics and pragmatics using data from both children and adults across multiple languages.
Robin Clark - Mathematical linguistics and formal semantics, game theory, acquisition and learnability, formal syntax
David Embick - Syntax, morphology, morphology-syntax interface, neurolinguistics
Anna Papafragou - Experimental semantics and pragmatics, language acquisition, language and cognition
Martin Salzmann - Syntax, morphology, morphology-syntax interface, syntax-semantics interface, microvariation
Florian Schwarz - Formal semantics and pragmatics, semantic and pragmatic processing
Scott Weinstein (Philosophy) - Logic, formal learning theory, machine learning, recursive function theory
Sociolinguistics at Penn is led by the Language Variation & Cognition Lab, and focuses on linguistic variation and change in progress. Research in this field looks into the causes of linguistic change, such as social factors and contact with other languages, and has implications for all other subfields.
Nicole Holliday - Sociolinguistics, sociophonetics, identity, ethnicity
Meredith Tamminga - Language variation and change, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics
William Labov (retired) - Sociolinguistics, language change, speech perception and production, research on reading
Syntax is the study of the structure of sentences, the principles, both universal and language specific, that govern how words are assembled to yield grammatical sentences. At Penn, most syntactic research focusses on syntactic variation, across languages and over time.
Robin Clark - Mathematical linguistics and formal semantics, game theory, acquisition and learnability, formal syntax
David Embick - Syntax, morphology, morphology-syntax interface, neurolinguistics
Julie Anne Legate - Syntax, morphology, morphology-syntax interface, language acquisition
Martin Salzmann - Syntax, morphology, morphology-syntax interface, syntax-semantics interface, microvariation
Beatrice Santorini - Syntax, Germanic linguistics, language change