Michael T. Putnam

Research Group

Morphology Circle at Penn State

Our research focuses on issues related to ‘words’ and the mental lexicon and the syntax-morphology interface. While we primarily adopt a decompositional approach to the formation of these structural units, we also actively engage with and investigate paradigmatic issues and construction-oriented themes. Along these lines, we understand ‘morphology’ to be distributed across different modules of grammar rather than housed in any particular domain.

From an empirical perspective, we investigate the storage and computation of lexical items using a combination of experimental, computational, and AI-driven methods to better understand the general properties of the mental lexicon. We are also expanding our scope to include investigations involving clinical populations.

Although we collectively work on issues related to morphology and its interfaces, we individually maintain diverse interests spanning comparative, contact, diachronic, and experimental approaches.

Research Interests

I am profoundly interested in the structure of language, specifically morphology and syntax, as it centers on the internal complexity of ‘words.’ My research is driven by a few core questions:

• How is the mental lexicon architected? How do elements of sound, meaning, and structure intersect, and how can we capture both decompositional and paradigmatic properties within an internally constrained system?
• How do linguistic systems evolve in real time and across time? How do categories, words, and constructions emerge, vary, and adapt, particularly in contact and multilingual settings?
• How can we model cognitive processing? How can advanced theoretical models effectively interface with behavioral, computational, and AI-driven techniques to investigate language in action?
• How do these mechanisms scale across populations? What can patterns of variation in naturalistic contact settings and clinical populations tell us about the general architecture of the human language faculty?

Sample publications

Books

Heritage languages and syntactic theory. (edited with Roberta D’Alessandro & Silvia Terenghi). in press. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The linguistic diversity of German: Sociolinguistic and structural variation in Europe and the diaspora. (with Joshua Bousquette, Josh Brown, & Joseph Salmons). under contract. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

An introduction to Language Attrition: linguistic, social, and cognitive perspectives. (with David Natvig & Nora Vosburg). under contract. London: Routledge.

2020

Passives and middles in Mainland Scandinavian: Microvariation through exponency.[Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs.] (with Antonio Fábregas). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Unbounded dependency constructions: Theoretical and experimental perspectives. [Oxford Surveys in Syntax and Morphology]. (with Rui Chaves). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics. (edited with B. Richard Page). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2013

The structural design of language. (with Thomas S. Stroik). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Articles and book chapters

2024

The importance of features and exponents: Dissolving Feature Reassembly. (with Terje Lohndal). Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 14(1): 1-36. https://benjamins.com/catalog/lab.23023.loh

Filler-gap dependencies in bi- and multilingual grammars: Findings, challenges, and unknowns. (with Silvia Perpiñan). Second Language Research, 40(1): 3-17. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/02676583231214070

When covert modality sneaks into your grammar: wh-infinitives in American Norwegian. (with Åshild Søfteland). Second Language Research, 171-194. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02676583221103741

Modeling multilingual grammars: Constraints and predictions. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 14(1): 105-115. https://benjamins.com/catalog/lab.23074.loh

2023

Stability in the integrated bilingual grammar: Tense exponency in North American Norwegian (with David Natvig & Alexander Lykke). Nordic Journal of Linguistics, First View. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nordic-journal-of-linguistics/article/stability-in-the-integrated-bilingual-grammar-tense-exponency-in-north-american-norwegian/09212D6C076CD7610E4DA6570ADAB09C

2022

Islands, expressiveness, and the theory/formalism confusion. (with Rui P. Chaves). Theoretical Linguistics, 48(3-4): 219-231.  https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/tl-2022-2041/html

Why is inflectional morphology difficult to borrow? – Distributing and lexicalizing plural allomorphy in Pennsylvania Dutch. (with Rose Fisher, David Natvig, Erin Pretorius, & Katharina Schuhmann). Languages 7, 86. https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/7/2/86

Mismatches at the syntax-semantics interface: The case of non-finite complementation in American-Norwegian. (with Åshild Søfteland). 45(3): 310-347 . Nordic Journal of Linguistics. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nordic-journal-of-linguistics/article/mismatches-at-the-syntaxsemantics-interface-the-case-of-nonfinite-complementation-in-american-norwegian/4B85B936AA6D21A9741B594B3736F7A8

2021

The tale of two lexicons: Decomposing complexity across a distributed lexicon. (with Terje Lohndal). Heritage Language Journal 18(2): 1-29. https://brill.com/view/journals/hlj/18/2/article-p1_4.xml

Overextension in Gottscheerisch (negative) imperatives: Proclisis at the edge of the first phase. (with Andrew D. Hoffman). The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 24(2): 185-219.

Addressing challenges in formal research on moribund heritage languages: A path forward. (with Roberta D’Alessandro & David A. Natvig). Frontiers in Psychology, 12:700126. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.700126/full

2020

How wide the divide? – Theorizing ‘constructions’ in generative and usage-based frameworks. (with Antonio Fábregas & Matthew Carlson). Frontiers in Psychology, 12:601303. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.601303/full

Redefining language death: Evidence from moribund grammars. (with Joshua Bousquette). Language Learning 70(S1): 185-228

2019

Language attrition and the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis. (with Silvia Perez-Cortes & Liliana Sánchez). In The Oxford Handbook of Language Attrition (ed. M. Schmid & B. Köpke), Oxford: Oxford University Press: 18-24.

Derivational complexity vs. transfer effects: Long-distance-wh-movement in heritage and L2 grammars. (with Holger Hopp & Nora Vosburg). Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 9(3): 341-375.

2016

Co-activation in bilingual grammars: A computational account of code mixing. (with Matt Goldrick & Lara Schwarz). Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 19(5): 857-876.

2013

What’s so incomplete about incomplete acquisition? A prolegomenon to modeling heritage language grammars. (with Liliana Sánchez). Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 3(4): 478-508.