Michael Becker
michael.becker@phonologist.org
michael@linguist.umass.edu
Visiting assistant professor, UMass Linguistics
Research interests
- Phonology, the lexicon, and the connections between them
- Modeling variable and categorical effects in the lexicon
- Acquisition of grammatical trends by humans and machines
Recent journal publications
- Michael Becker, Andrew Nevins, and Jonathan Levine (to appear) Asymmetries in Generalizing Alternations to and from Initial Syllables. Language.
- Maria Gouskova and Michael Becker (to appear) Nonce words show that Russian yer alternations are governed by the grammar. NLLT.
- Michael Becker and Anne-Michelle Tessier (2011) Trajectories of faithfulness in child-specific phonology. Phonology 28:2, pp. 163–196.
- Michael Becker, Nihan Ketrez, and Andrew Nevins (2011) The Surfeit of the Stimulus: Analytic biases filter lexical statistics in Turkish laryngeal alternations. Language 87:1, pp. 84–125.
Submitted manuscripts
- (Under revision for NLLT) Michael Becker, Lauren Eby Clemens, and Andrew Nevins. A richer model is not always more accurate: the case of French and Portuguese plurals.
- (Under revision for Phonology) Michael Becker and Lena Fainleib. The naturalness of product-oriented generalizations. Ms. UMass Amherst. Also available as ROA-1036.
Recent/upcoming news
- January 5-8, 2012: I presented "A wug study of the grammar of Russian yers" at the 86th meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Portland, OR. With Maria Gouskova (NYU).
- January 5-8, 2012: I presented "Discrete grammar beats phonetics and usage-based predictors in alternations" at the 86th meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Portland, OR. With Lauren Eby Clemens (Harvard) and Andrew Nevins (UCL). [project page]
- November 11-13, 2011: I presented "Russian yer alternations are governed by the grammar" at the 42nd Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, Toronto. With Maria Gouskova (NYU).
- November 11-13, 2011: I presented "A richer model is not always more accurate: the case of French and Portuguese plurals" at the 42nd Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, Toronto. With Lauren Eby Clemens (Harvard) and Andrew Nevins (UCL). [project page]