Colin Phillips

Curriculum Vitae

Department of Linguistics University of Maryland 1401 Marie Mount Hall College Park, MD 20742 USA

phone: 301-405-3082 fax: 301-405-7104 lab: 301-405-6901 email: colin@glue.umd.edu http://www.ling.udel.edu/colin

Academic Positions

2000-: Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland, College Park; co-director, Cognitive Neuroscience of Language Laboratory
1997-2000: Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics and Program in Cognitive Science, University of Delaware.

Education

1996-1997: Postdoctoral Associate, Mind Articulation Project, Dept of Linguistics & Philosophy, MIT.

1991-1996: Department of Linguistics & Philosphy, MIT, PhD. Thesis title: Order and Structure; Supervisor: Alec Marantz

1990-1991: Department of Linguistics, University of Rochester, Graduate fellowship

1986-1990: Worcester College, Oxford University, BA (Hons. Class I), Modern Languages, specialization in German.

Academic Awards

1990-1991 University of Rochester Graduate Fellowship

1989-1990 Oxford University: Worcester Collge Society Prize for Arts & Humanities

1989-1990 Oxford University: Worcester College Exhibition award

Grant Awards

• $267,858: NSF CAREER Program Award (2000-2004): CAREER: Integration of Linguistic Knowledge and Language Processing.
• $135,434: McDonnell-Pew Cognitive Neuroscience Program Award (1999-2002). The Neural Computation of Phonological Categories.
• $104,475: NSF Major Research Instrumentation Award (1999-2001). (Co-PI, together with James Hoffman, Barbara Landau, John Whalen, all UD Psychology department.) High Density EEG Recording for Research in Cognitive Science.
• $5,000: Oak Ridge Associated Universities Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Award (1999). Role of Auditory Cortex in Phonological Processing.
• $29,850, University of Delaware Research Foundation Award (1998). Biomagnetic Studies of Speech Processing.
• $2,000, College of Arts & Sciences Research Award, University of Delaware (1998). Research on biomagnetism and speech perception.
• $6,000, General University Research Award, University of Delaware (1998). Dynamic Sentence Structure: A Crosslinguistic Perspective.
• $1,500, Institute for Transforming Undergraduate Education, University of Delaware (1997). For development of resources for use of instructional technology in undergraduate linguistics courses.

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Teaching Experience

• University of Maryland
  • Psycholinguistics (LING 689): Fall 2000 Web Site
  • Cognitive Neuroscience of Language (LING 646): Fall 2000 Web Site
• University of Delaware
  • Introduction to Linguistics (LING 101, 90-120 students): Fall '99 Web Site, Fall '98 Web Site, Fall '97
  • Psycholinguistics (CGSC 496/696): Fall '99 Web Site; Fall '98 Web Site: Fall '97 Web Site; Spring '97 Web Site
  • Language and Cognitive Neuroscience (LING/CGSC 890, Spring '99)
  • Syntax II (LING 610, second semester graduate course, Spring 2000, Spring '98)
  • Organization of Language (LING/CGSC 890, graduate seminar, Spring '98)
  • Mind, Brain & Language (Undergraduate Honors seminar, Spring '97)
• Previous
  • Teaching Assistant, Philosophy of Language and Linguistics. Spring 1994. Noam Chomsky.
  • Teaching Assistant, Theory of Grammar (first semester graduate syntax). Fall 1993. Kenneth Hale and David Pesetsky.
  • English Language Teaching: 1988-1992, teaching EFL at a variety of ages and levels in the UK and Germany.
• Student Supervision
  • Meesook Kim, PhD co-supervisor (with Barbara Landau): A Cross-linguistic Perspective on the Acquisition of Locative Verbs. Graduated Summer 1999.
  • David Schneider, PhD supervisor: Incremental Syntactic Parsing: Computational and Experimental Investigations. Graduated Summer 1999.
  • Ted Eastwick, PhD student, supervisor: experimental studies of adult language processing
  • Evniki Edgar, PhD student, supervisor: psycholinguistics
  • Baris Kabak, PhD student, supervisor: psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, syntax
  • Jason Lilley, PhD student, supervisor: syntax
  • Kaia Wong, PhD student, supervisor: psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics
  • Nina Kazanina, PhD student, supervisor: language acquisition, language typology, neurolinguistics
  • Tom Pellathy, undergraduate researcher, research supervisor: neurolinguistics

   

  • Norhaida Aman, dissertation committee member: How to Ask What in Malay: the Acquisition of Wh-questions in Singapore Malay. Graduated Summer 1999.
  • Eynat Gutman, PhD dissertation committee member: Null-Subjects: A Theory of Syntactic and Discourse Identification. Graduated Summer 1999.
  • Jing Liu: PhD dissertation committee member. The Acquisition of Superordinate Terms. Graduated Summer 2000.
  • Ed Munnich: dissertation committee member: critical periods for semantic learning
  • Preston Becker, PhD student: resumptive pronouns in L2 learners of English
  • Pam Burton: PhD dissertation committee member - ERP studies of visual attention
  • Lisa Michaud: PhD dissertation committee member - computational modeling of interlanguage grammars

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Service

• University of Delaware
  • Director of Graduate Studies,1999-2000
  • Search Committee Chair (two searches): Department of Linguistics, 1997-1998
  • Faculty advisor to NELS 29 organizing committee, 1998
  • Undergraduate Studies Committee: Department of Linguistics, 1997-2000
  • Senator-at-large: College of Arts & Sciences Faculty Senate, 1997-8
  • Linguistics Colloquium Series: Co-organizer, 1997-2000 (with Dave Schneider, Baris Kabak)
  • Cognitive Science lab committee: Program in Cognitive Science, 1997-2000 [implementing resources for instructional technology]
• Editorial Board: Glot International
• Reviewer
  • National Science Foundation
  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
  • Language Acquisition (1995-)
  • Cognition (1998-)
  • Linguistic Inquiry (1997-)
  • Journal of Linguistics (1998-)
  • Journal of Psycholinguistic Research (1996)
  • MIT Press/Bradford Books (1995)
  • Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics [Kluwer Publishers]
  • John Benjamins publishers (1996-1997)
  • NELS (1998-)
  • Boston University Conference on Language Development (1997-)
  • West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (1998-)
  • Eastern States Conference on Linguistics (1997-)
  • CUNY Sentence Processing Conference (1997)
  • Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics (1999)
• Previous
  • Manager & General Editor, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 1992/3-1994/5, volumes #18-#27. Expanded student-run business to the point where it provides (on-going) source of research and travel funding for graduate students, underwriting of several conferences, and publication of 150+ titles.
  • Organizer
    • (and founder of) LingLunch departmental seminar series, MIT, 1993-1994
    • MIT Linguistics Colloquium series, 1994-1995 (with Orin Percus)
  • Conference Coordinator
    • The Morphology-Syntax Connection, MIT, January 1994 (with Heidi Harley)
    • Advances in Second Language Acquisition, MIT, January 1993
  • Conference Committee:
    • Linguistic Society of America Meeting, Boston, January 1994
    • Formal Approaches to Japanese Linguistics I, MIT, May 1994
    • NELS 26, MIT/Harvard, October 1995
    • CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, Rochester, May 1991

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Research Interests

• General: my overall objective is to be able to seamlessly integrate theories of linguistic knowledge from the level of linguistic theory to real time models of language processing to neuroscientific models.
• Syntax: constituent structure, linear order-hierarchy relations, ergativity, agreement alternations.
• Language processing: parser-grammar relations, locality, grammatical search, constraints on movement, computational modeling, resource limitations
• Neurolinguistics: magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electrophysiology (ERP), neural structures involved in phonological and syntactic processing.
• Language Acquisition: cross-language variation and language acquisition; morphosyntax, verb argument structure

Papers and Publications

1. Colin Phillips. (in press). Levels of representation in the electrophysiology of speech perception. Cognitive Science.
2. David Schneider & Colin Phillips. (submitted). Grammatical search and reanalysis.
3. Colin Phillips, Tom Pellathy, Alec Marantz, Elron Yellin, Ken Wexler, Martha McGinnis, David Poeppel & Tim Roberts. (in press). Auditory cortex accesses phonetic categories: an MEG mismatch study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
4. Roberta Golinkoff & Colin Phillips (in press). Surveying the field of language acquisition - Review of Ritchie & Bhatia 1999 "Handbook of Child Language Acquisition". Contemporary Psychology.
5. Colin Phillips (in press). Mechanisms for rapid use of focus information - Review of Julie Sedivy's dissertation. GLOT International.
6. Meesook Kim, Barbara Landau & Colin Phillips. 1999. Cross-linguistic Differences in Children's Syntax for Locative Verbs. In: Proceedings of BUCLD 23. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
7. Colin Phillips. to appear. Linear order and constituency. Linguistic Inquiry.
8. Colin Phillips. 1998. Teaching syntax with Trees. Glot 3.7.
9. Meesook Kim & Colin Phillips. 1998. Complex-verb constructions in child Korean: Overt markers of covert functional structure. In: Proceedings of BUCLD 22. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
10. Kensuke Sekihara, David Poeppel, Alec Marantz, Colin Phillips, Hideaki Koizumi, Yasushi Miyashita. 1998. MEG Covariance Difference Analysis: A Method to Extract Target Source Activities by Using Task and Control Measurements. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 45, 87-97.
11. Colin Phillips. 1998. Disagreement between Adults and Children. In A. Mendikoetxea & M. Uribe-Etxebarria (eds), Theoretical Issues on the Morphology-Syntax Interface. San Sebastian: ASJU, pp.359-394.
12. David Poeppel, Colin Phillips, Elron Yellin, Howard Rowley, Timothy Roberts, Alec Marantz. 1997. Processing of Vowels in Supratemporal Auditory Cortex. Neuroscience Letters 221, 145-148.
13. Colin Phillips & Edward Gibson. 1997. On the Strength of the Local Attachment Preference. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. 23, 323-346.
14. Colin Phillips. 1997. Merge Right: an Approach to Constituency Conflicts. In B. Agbayani & S.-W. Tang (eds.), Proceedings of WCCFL XV. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, pp.381-395.
15. Colin Phillips. 1996. Order and Structure.1996. PhD dissertation, MIT. Distributed by MIT Working Papers in Linguistics.
16. David Poeppel, Elron Yellin, Colin Phillips, Timothy Roberts, Howard Rowley, Kenneth Wexler & Alec Marantz. 1996. Task-induced Asymmetry of the Auditory Evoked M100 Neuromagnetic Field Elicited by Speech Sounds. Cognitive Brain Research 4, 231-242.
17. Colin Phillips. 1996. Root Infinitives are Finite. In: A. Stringfellow, D. Cahana-Amitay, E. Hughes & A. Zukowski (eds), Proceedings of BUCLD 20. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
18. Colin Phillips. 1996. Ergative Subjects. In: D. Gerdts, C. Burgess & K. Dziwirek (eds), Grammatical Relations: Empirical Arguments and Theoretical Issues. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
19. Colin Phillips. 1995. Right Association in Parsing and Grammar. In: C. Schütze, J. Ganger & K. Broihier (eds), Papers on Language Processing and Acquisition. MITWPL #26, 37-93.
20. Colin Phillips. 1995. Syntax at Age Two: Cross-Linguistic Differences. In: C. Schütze, J. Ganger & K. Broihier (eds), Papers on Language Processing and Acquisition. MITWPL #26, 225-282.
21. Colin Phillips, Alec Marantz, Martha McGinnis et al. 1995. Brain Mechanisms of Speech Perception: A Preliminary Report. 1995. In: C. Schütze, J. Ganger & K. Broihier (eds), Papers on Language Processing and Acquisition. MITWPL #26, 125-163.
22. Colin Phillips. 1994. On the Nature of Polysynthetic Inflection. In: Proceedings of CONSOLE 2. Leiden: SOLE.
23. Colin Phillips. 1994. Are Feature Hierarchies Autosegmental Hierarchies? In: A. Carnie, H. Harley & T. Bures (eds), Papers on Phonology and Morphology. MITWPL #21, 173-226.
24. Colin Phillips & Heidi Harley. 1994. The Morphology-Syntax Connection (editor, with Heidi Harley). MITWPL #22.
25. Colin Phillips. 1993. Conditions on Agreement in Yimas. In: J.D. Bobaljik & C. Phillips (eds), Papers on Case and Agreement I. MITWPL #18, 273-312.
26. Colin Phillips. 1993.Papers on Case & Agreement II (editor). MITWPL #19.
27. Jonathan Bobaljik & Colin Phillips. 1993. Papers on Case & Agreement I (editor, with Jonathan Bobaljik). MITWPL #18.

Presentations

1. Competence and Performance: Linear Order and Resource Limitations. Utrecht University Linguistics Colloquium. May 2000.
2. Incremental Grammatical Search and Analysis. Georgetown University Linguistics Colloquium. April 2000.
3. Auditory Cortex Representations of Phonological Features. Colin Phillips, Tom Pellathy, Baris Kabak & Alec Marantz. Cognitive Neuroscience Society, San Francisco. April 2000.
4. Semantic and Syntactic Resources in Ambiguity Resolution. Ted Eastwick & Colin Phillips. CUNY Sentence Processing conference, San Diego. March 2000.
5. Lexical Access and Syntactic Search: The Case of Dative (Non-)Alternations. Colin Phillips, Evniki Edgar & Baris Kabak. CUNY Sentence Processing conference, San Diego. March 2000.
6. How the Parser Solves a Look-Ahead Problem: Parsing Parasitic Gaps. Colin Phillips & Kaia Wong. CUNY Sentence Processing conference, San Diego. March 2000.
7. Incremental Grammatical Search and Grammar-Processor Identity. U. of Southern California Linguistics Colloquium. January 2000.
8. Commentary: Learnability and Cross-Language Uniformity. U. of Southern California Language and Mind Forum. January 2000.
9. Tutorial: Linguistics and the Brain. (with Roumyana Izvorski, Georgetown U.). U. of Southern California Language and Mind Forum. January 2000.
10. Incremental Grammatical Search and Analysis. University of Arizona Linguistics Colloquium. January 2000.
    
    
11. Grammatical Search in Parsing. University of Maryland Linguistics Colloquium. December 1999
12. Learnability and Typology: The Case of Locative Verbs. University of Maryland Dept. of Linguistics, December 1999.
13. Phonological Categories and Auditory Cortex. University of Maryland Dept. of Linguistics. December 1999.
14. Parser, Grammar Resources - Which is the odd one out? U. Mass. Amherst Linguistics Colloquium, October 1999.
15. Variability in semantic cue effectiveness: inducing low-span performance in high-span readers. (Ted Eastwick & Colin Phillips.) Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing IV. University of Edinburgh, Scotland. September 1999.
16. Categories and Constituents in the Neuroscience of Language. Invited presentation, Neuroscience of Language workshop, International Institute of Advanced Studies, Kyoto, Japan. July 1999.
17. Grammar, Parsing, and Resource Modularity. Keio University Linguistics Colloquium, Tokyo, Japan. July 1999.
18. Cross-linguistic Variation in Syntax-Semantics Mappings: Implications for Learnability. Tokyo Institute for Advanced Studies of Language, Tokyo, Japan. July 1999.
19. Linguistic Representations in the Brain. Sophia University Linguistics Colloquium, Tokyo, Japan. July 1999.
20. Magnetic Mismatch Field Elicited by Phonological Feature Contrast. (Colin Phillips, Tom Pellathy & Alec Marantz). Poster presented at the 6th annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Washington D.C., April 1999.
21. Competence & Performance: Incremental Structure Building and Syntactic Search. University of Pennsylvania Linguistics Colloquium, March 1999.
22. Reanalysis as a Last Resort? (David Schneider & Colin Phillips). CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, New York, March 1999.
    
    
23. Incremental Grammar. Princeton University Linguistics Colloquium. November 1998.
24. Units of Linguistic Representation in the Brain. Princeton University Linguistics Colloquium. November 1998.
25. Cross-linguistic Differences in Children's Syntax for Locative Verbs. (Meesook Kim, Barbara Landau & Colin Phillips). Boston University Conference on Language Development. November 1998.
26. An Incremental Grammar for Competence and Performance Systems. University of Durham Linguistics Colloquium. June 1998.
27. On the Absence of Competence Systems. CUNY Graduate Center Psycholinguistics Supper Club. April 1998.
28. On the Absence of Performance Systems. CUNY Graduate Center Syntax Lunch. April 1998.
29. Linear Order and Constituency. LSA annual meeting, New York City. January 1998.
30. A Brain Potential that Indexes Vowel Height. (Colin Phillips, Alec Marantz, David Poeppel, Tim Roberts, Krishna Govindarajan). LSA annual meeting, New York City. January 1998.
    
    
31. Order and Constituency. University of Maryland Linguistics Colloquium. November 1997.
32. Complex-verb constructions in child Korean: Overt markers of covert functional structure. 1998 (to appear). (Meesook Kim & Colin Phillips). Boston University Conference on Language Development. November 1997.
33. Incremental Grammar and the Nature of Performance Systems. Johns Hopkins University Cognitive Science Colloquium. October 1997.
34. MEG Studies of Vowel Processing in Auditory Cortex. (Colin Phillips, Krishna Govindarajan, David Poeppel, Tim Roberts, Howard Rowley, Alec Marantz). 4th Annual Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting. Boston, MA. March 1997.
35. Local Attachment and Competing Constraints. (with Edward Gibson) 10th Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference. Santa Monica, CA. March 1997.
    
    
36. Vanishing Constituents: Grammar as Parsing. Boston University Linguistics Colloquium series. November 1996.
37. A Cross-linguistic Perspective on Phoneme Perception using Magnetic Mismatch Fields. (Alec Marantz, Colin Phillips et al.). Poster presented at the third annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. San Francisco, CA. April 1996.
38. On the Strength of the Local Attachment Preference. (with Edward Gibson). 9th annual CUNY sentence processing conference. New York, March 1996.
39. Linear Order and Contradictory Constituency. 15th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Irvine, CA. February 1996.
40. Parsing and Constituency. UCLA Linguistics Colloquium. February 1996.
41. Studying Speech Perception using Magnetic Source Imaging. Department of Linguistics, UCLA. February 1996.
42. The Implementation of Linguistic Knowledge. Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Science, University of Delaware. January 1996.
43. Structural Complexity and Constituent Structure. Linguistics colloquium, University of Delaware. January 1996.
44. Parsing and Constituency. UC Irvine Linguistics/Cognitive Science Colloquium. January 1996.
45. Speech Perception and Magnetic Source Imaging. Department of Linguistics, UC Irvine. January 1996.
46. Disagreement between Adults and Children. Linguistic Society of America. San Diego: January 1996.
47. Phonemic contrasts in auditory cortex: cross-linguistic evidence from magnetic mismatch. Linguistic Society of America. San Diego: January 1996. (with Alec Marantz, Martha McGinnis, Ken Wexler et al.)
    
    
48. Some implications of cross-linguistic contrasts in two-year olds' syntax. Boston University Conference on Language Development. November 1995.
49. Right Association: A single strategy for structural parsing. NELS 26 Sentence Processing workshop. MIT: October 1995.
50. Continuous and categorical properties of VOT perception. Human Brain Map 1 Conference. Paris: June 1995. (with Alec Marantz, David Poeppel et al.)
51. Auditory cortex accesses phonetic categories: Evidence from MMF. Human Brain Map 1 Conference. Paris: June 1995. (with Alec Marantz, Martha McGinnis et al.)
52. Brain imaging and speech perception: A progress report. Massachusetts General Hospital Auditory Physiology Colloquium. Boston: April 1995. (with David Poeppel, Alec Marantz et al.)
53. What can the brain teach us about language? University of Edinburgh, April 1995.
54. What's missing from the syntax of two-year olds? Linguistics Association of Great Britain. Newcastle-upon-tyne: April 1995.
55. Auditory cortex accesses phonetic categories. Society for Cognitive Neuroscience. San Francisco: March 1995. (with Alec Marantz, Martha McGinnis et al.)
56. Neural correlates of categorical perception of voice onset time. Society for Cognitive Neuroscience. San Francisco: March 1995. (with Alec Marantz, David Poeppel et al.)
57. Generalizing Right Association. CUNY Sentence Processing Conference. Tucson: March 1995.
58. MEG studies of speech perception. MIT Speech Group Colloquium, February 1995. (with David Poeppel)
59. Continuous and categorical perception of stops. McDonnell-Pew Society Conference. Tucson: January 1995. (with Alec Marantz, Elron Yellin et al.)
60. Verb movement in early wh-questions. Linguistic Society of America. New Orleans: January 1995.
61. The continuous and the discrete in neural representations of stops. Linguistic Society of America. New Orleans: January 1995. (with Alec Marantz, Ken Wexler et al.)
    
    
62. Agreement alternations. Maryland Minimalist Workshop. College Park: May 1994.
63. Spreading values. Linguistic Society of America. Boston: January 1994.
64. Verbal case and polysynthetic inflection. CONSOLE. Tübingen: December 1993.
65. S-structure ergativity, LF accusativity. 6th Biennial Conference on Grammatical Relations. Vancouver: September 1993.
66. What is the minimalist approach to syntax? University of Rochester, December 1991. (4 talks)