Kenneth Hanson
About Me
I’m a PhD student in the Department of Linguistics at Stony Brook University (entered 2020). My advisor is Thomas Graf.
I received a BA from Michigan State University in 2014, where I majored in linguistics and Japanese, with a minor in computer science. After graduating, I worked for four years as an assistant English teacher in Japan through the JET Programme. I’ve also created some free Japanese language education materials.
My research focuses on computational syntax. I use subregular formal languages to understand the formal restrictions on long-distance syntactic phenomena, especially case and agreement. I am also interested in Japanese linguistics.
Some other interests of mine include: music (piano, marimba, music theory), physics & astronomy, operating systems, typography, cognitive psychology, and European history.
What’s new?
- My paper titled Tier-Based Strict Locality and the Typology of Agreement has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Language Modeling. [ preprint ]
- My CLS 60 proceedings paper is available. This is less technical version of the analysis in the JLM paper. [ paper ]
- I’m presenting at the LSA 2025 Annual Meeting (Jan. 9-12), poster titled Upward Agreement and Syntactic Counterfeeding in Lubukusu. [ abstract ]
- I presented at SYNC 2024 (Dec. 7), talk titled A Tier-Based Analysis of Parasitic Agreement in Hindi-Urdu. [ handout ]
- I presented at SCiL 2024 (June 27–29), poster titled Tiers, paths, and syntactic locality: The view from learning. [ paper | poster ]
- I presented at the Workshop on Myopia in Grammar (June 13–14), talk titled The computational basis of locality in syntactic agreement. [ slides | handout ]
- I presented at CLS 60 (April 26–28), talk titled A tier-based model of syntactic agreement. [ slides | handout ]
Contact
Email me at my first initial + last name + six seven nine at gmail dot com.