I have two main research concentrations. The first one is diachronic Chinese syntax. I collect sentences from Classical and Middle Chinese texts in order to perform synchronic analysis of the grammars of these respective times. I also try to identify processes and catalysts for the changes I observe between the two periods.

The other main prong of my research is comparative Austronesian syntax. I focus primarily on Philippine languages (especially Tagalog) and Formosan languages, which are the aboriginal languages of Taiwan. I gather the Formosan data through fieldwork.

My primary research interests are in multilingual grammar engineering, the study of variation, both within and across languages, and the relationship between linguistics and computational linguistics. My grammar engineering work centers on the LinGO Grammar Matrix, an open-source starter kit for the development of broad-coverage precision HPSG grammars.

My research area is sociolinguistics with special attention to the study of non-linguists’ beliefs about language (often called 'language attitudes')and the geographical distribution of language variation (called Perceptual Dialectology). I welcome inquiries about projects related to these areas.

My publications span the areas of generative syntax, second language acquisition theory, and applied linguistics, especially in the Romance languages (synchronic and diachronic). The main areas of specialization are theoretical syntax and nonnative language learning, linked in my current research dealing with language processing and age effects. I am interested in how monolinguals and bilinguals (child and adult learners) understand and produce the grammatical aspects of speech such as agreement, displacement and coreference. I would welcome student research dealing with issues in bilingualism, language acquisition, and language processing.

I specialize in formal semantics of natural language. The languages that my research deals with are English and Japanese. My past research concentrated on temporal semantics (tense and aspect) but also dealt with some related research issues such as modality, conditionals, issues having to do with discourse, attitude verbs. I am also interested in Japanese linguistics, especially issues having to do with semantics suchas categorical vs. thetic judgments.

My research interests lie in sociolinguistics (the study of language in its various social contexts, the relationships between language and social network structure, language attitudes and the outcomes of language and dialect contact) and phonetics (the study of the acoustic properties of spoken language, perception, and physiological aspects of human speech). One of my principle languages of study is Jamaican Creole. In addition, I currently conduct research into dialect evolution and interethnic contact in Pacific Northwest English.

My research is primarily concerned with the syntactic underpinnings of tense, aspect and mood, including study of the functional categories and syntactic features that contribute to temporal reference. Some of the issues of current interest in my work include such questions as: whether all languages have Tense Phrase in the usually understood sense; whether temporal ordering is attributable to Tense Phrase or to higher functional categories where mood is encoded; and differences between nominals and clauses with respect to the distribution of temporal functional categories. The broad goal of this work is to further the field's understanding of what is universal in the grammar of tense/aspect/modality.