Linguistics

I am a Linguistics PhD student at the University of Chicago. My primary focus is theoretical morphosyntax and morphosemantics. I am especially interested in (Mainland) Southeast Asian languages, as well as (Northern) Ndebele, an understudied Bantu language related to Zulu, which is spoken in Zimbabwe.

 

Currently I am working on Semantic (and Formal) Locative Inversion in Ndebele and its interaction with the applicative suffix. I am also working with Gallagher Flinn on a project modeling when non-native consonant phonemes are borrowed into a native inventory instead of being repaired.
Other recent work has included looking at the morphosemantics of the emergence of new classifiers from class term compounds in Vietnamese. I have previously worked on locality domains of (idiosyncratic) meaning and category assignment in Modern Hebrew blends.

 

Papers

2011. “Idiomatic Root Merge in Modern Hebrew blends“. Proceedings of the Arizona Linguistics Circle 4, Coyote Papers: Working Papers in Linguistics 18.1: Linguistics Circle, Tucson.

 

Talks

  • “Unifying the semantics of classifiers and class terms in Vietnamese”. TLS 14; Austin (Nov 2013)
  • “Classifiers and class terms: how to have your subkind and count it too”. Countability Workshop; Düsseldorf (September 2013).
  • “The emergence of classifiers from class term compounds in Vietnamese”. SEALS 23; Bangkok (May 2013).
  • “Class term compounding as a semantic bleaching process in classifier emergence”. Systematic Semantic Change workshop; Austin (April 2013).
  • “Class(ifier) mobility: emergence of classifiers from compounds”. 87th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America; Boston (January 2013).
  • “Category-free classification in Vietnamese compounds”. 17th LIPP Symposium on Parts of Speech across Languages, in Acquisition, Mind and Brain; Munich, Germany (July 2012).
  • “Idiomatic Root Merge in Modern Hebrew blends.” 4th Arizona Linguistics Circle Conference; University of Arizona, Tucson (October 2010).

Contact

 

 

email: mike.tt.pham [at] gmail [dot] com

tumblr: mtpham.tumblr.com

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