About

Emily Clem is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at UC San Diego. She received her BA in Linguistics from The Ohio State University and her PhD in Linguistics from UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on syntax and its interfaces with semantics and morphology. Her work incorporates description, analysis, and theory, with an emphasis on using data from understudied languages to inform syntactic theory. She has collaborated with Indigenous language community members and other linguists on both documentation and large-scale typology projects concerning languages of Africa and the Americas, especially Amazonian languages. Some of her research topics include case, agreement, binding, and switch-reference.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Mathematics
• Algorithm
• Philosophy
• Linguistics
• Artificial Intelligence
• Mathematical analysis
• Epistemology
• Statistics
• Geology

Selected publications

• Discontinuous vowel harmony in Guébie: Cyclic interleaving of syntax and phonology

  Language · 2026-05-05

  articleOpen access

  Abstract This article introduces the phenomenon of discontinuous harmony, where the target and trigger of harmony are separated by intervening nonharmonizing words. We present a case study from Guébie (Kru; Côte d’Ivoire) in which particle verbs are split via focus movement. Despite appearing at opposite edges of the clause, the verb controls harmony on the particle without affecting the vowels of intervening material. While discontinuous harmony would appear to violate locality, we offer an analysis that involves local harmony followed by syntactic movement that separates the trigger and target. This analysis thus relies on a cyclic interleaving of syntactic and phonological operations, where syntactic information persists through phonological evaluation and is available to later cycles of syntax.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Agreement and Concord

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2025-09-04

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Dependent Case by Agree: Ergative in Shawi

  Linguistic Inquiry · 2024-03-07 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Ergative and accusative behave as dependent cases insofar as their appearance on a nominal depends on the presence of another nominal in the same domain. Recent work has taken the phenomenon of case dependency to challenge the idea that case is assigned via Agree. Focusing on Shawi (Kawapanan; Peru), we show not only that case dependency can be captured via Agree, but also that doing so opens up a new way of understanding the typology of global case splits. Ergative in Shawi appears when the subject is at least as high as the object on the person hierarchy—a global split—and can be accompanied by explicit realization of the object’s features on the subject (“object agreement on the subject”). We propose that ergative arises in Shawi when a probe on v Agrees with both the object and the subject, transferring object features to the subject; these features are spelled out as ergative case and as object agreement. In general, we show that dependent cases, both ergative and accusative, can be seen as a morphological outcome of Agree between a probe and a second goal, realizing features on that goal that were transferred from a previous goal in an earlier step of Agree.

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• The emergence of case matching in discontinuous DPs

  Natural Language & Linguistic Theory · 2024 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science

  Abstract This paper explores a distinction between two phenomena that yield multiple realizations of case associated with one nominal. The first is the familiar type of nominal case concord; the second is a new phenomenon we label “case iteration.” While case concord involves the morphological realization of case on categorially distinct elements via feature sharing, case iteration arises via a separate mechanism and involves the realization of multiple instances of a functional head, which we model as D. In this sense, the case concord/case iteration distinction mirrors the agreement/clitic doubling distinction in the domain of argument-predicate matching. We argue for the existence of case iteration as a separate phenomenon primarily on the basis of novel data from Tiwa (Tibeto-Burman; India). In Tiwa, traditional case concord in continuous DPs is ruled out, but case iteration is obligatory in discontinuous DPs. We also demonstrate that this phenomenon is attested in Amahuaca (Panoan; Peru) and explore related patterns crosslinguistically.

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• The Expression of Time in Amahuaca Switch-Reference Clauses

  Languages · 2023-05-26

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Many languages of lowland South America mark remoteness distinctions in their TAM systems. In Amahuaca (Panoan; Peru) multiple remoteness distinctions are made in the past and the future. I argue that the temporal remoteness morphemes (TRMs) of Amahuaca can be understood as indications of the remoteness of the event time relative to the utterance time in matrix environments. In dependent clauses, however, the picture is more complicated. By exploring adjunct switch-reference clauses, I show that TRMs in dependent clauses display a previously unreported ambiguity reminiscent of ambiguities found with adjunct tense. Specifically, they can relate the time of the adjunct clause event to the time of the matrix event or to the utterance time. I suggest that this ambiguity may arise from the availability of multiple interpretation sites for adjunct TRMs, with the possible interpretations being constrained by the temporal semantics of switch-reference markers themselves. This work thus contributes to the empirical understanding of how TRMs are interpreted in dependent clauses, suggesting interesting potential parallels to the interpretation of adjunct tense.

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• Infusing social justice in the development and instruction of a course on the history of phonetics

  The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2023-03-01

  articleSenior author

  We describe the design and implementation of a mixed undergraduate and graduate seminar on the history of phonetics (from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries). The goal of the course was to teach and learn about the history of the field using a pedagogical framework in which all aspects of the course are framed with the values of antiracism, social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Planning for the course involved discussion between the instructor, the graduate student DEI committee, the department Curriculum Committee, the linguistics librarian, and the teaching and learning resource center. Seminar topics included the development of systems of phonetic annotation and speech technology; the emergence of modern phonetics, speech-language pathology, and linguistics; and advancements in speech acoustics. In this presentation, we will also discuss students’ participation and evaluation of the course, which were very enthusiastic. Overall, we show how a course on the history of phonetics can be modeled and taught in such a way as to show the ways in which our field has marginalized and discriminated against certain communities, as well as to consider the ways in which we may learn from our history so as to be a more just and inclusive discipline moving forward.

  PublisherDOI

• Attitude reports without complementation: The case of Amahuaca

  Proceedings from Semantics and Linguistic Theory · 2022-12-29

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Classic analyses of propositional attitude reports assume that attitude verbs compose with a clausal argument that expresses a proposition. I use original fieldwork data to demonstrate that Amahuaca (Panoan; Peru) attitude reports involve high adjunct switch-reference clauses rather than clausal complements to an attitude verb. This structure raises issues for the traditionally assumed compositional semantics of attitude reports. I present two potential analyses that do not require the verb to compose directly with a complement CP, ultimately arguing in favor of an analysis that aligns with proposals by Kratzer (2006) and Moulton (2015) that the internal arguments of attitude verbs are individuals with propositional content. Amahuaca therefore provides novel empirical support for this approach to the semantics of attitude reports.

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• Disharmony and the Final-Over-Final Condition in Amahuaca

  Linguistic Inquiry · 2021 · 8 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Linguistics
  • Mathematics

  The Final-over-Final Condition (FOFC) rules out head-final projections that immediately dominate head-initial projections. Syntactically inert particles are known to show (apparent) exceptions to FOFC. However, Biberauer (2017) argues that seemingly FOFC-violating particles comply with a version of FOFC that is relativized to heads within an extended projection (Biberauer, Holmberg, and Roberts 2014). I present novel data from Amahuaca (Panoan; Peru) in which FOFC is violated by tense-aspect-mood particles within the verbal extended projection. I argue that this FOFC violation cannot be explained by the mechanisms proposed by Biberauer (2017). Instead, a view of FOFC grounded in restrictions on rightward dependencies (Cecchetto 2013, Zeijlstra 2016) predicts the type of exception found in Amahuaca.

  PublisherDOI

• Cyclic Expansion in Agree: Maximal Projections as Probes

  Linguistic Inquiry · 2021 · 70 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Linguistics
  • Mathematics

  When we couple the cyclic expansion of a probe’s domain assumed in Cyclic Agree (Rezac 2003, 2004, Béjar and Rezac 2009) with the lack of formal distinction between heads, intermediate projections, and phrases emphasized in Bare Phrase Structure (Chomsky 1995a,b), an interesting prediction arises. Maximal projections should be able to probe through the same mechanisms that allow intermediate projections to probe in familiar cases of Cyclic Agree. I argue that this prediction is borne out. I analyze agreeing adjunct C in Amahuaca (Panoan; Peru) as a maximal projection that probes its c-command domain in second-cycle Agree. This account derives C’s simultaneous sensitivity to DPs within its own clause and in the clause to which it adjoins. Therefore, I conclude that Amahuaca provides evidence that maximal projections can be probes. The account also yields insight into the syntax of switch-reference in Panoan and beyond.

  PublisherDOI

• Sub-Saharan Africa

  2020-12-31 · 1 citations

  reference-entrySenior author

  This chapter maps out the tonal, accentual, and intonational properties of sub-Saharan African languages, focusing particularly on Niger-Congo. It distinguishes tone systems by the number of contrastive tone heights and contours and their tonal distributions, as well as grammatical functions of tone. It considers positional prominence effects potentially analysed as word accent and concludes with discussion of both intonational pitch and length marking syntactic domains and clause types.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Peter Jenks

  University of California, Berkeley

  2 shared

• Hannah Sande

  2 shared

• John Merrill

  Michigan State University

  1 shared

• Nicholas Rolle

  Princeton University

  1 shared

• Virginia Dawson

  Western Washington University

  1 shared

• Shai Nielson

  1 shared

• Amy Rose Deal

  University of California, Berkeley

  1 shared

• Murat Yasavul

  The Ohio State University

  1 shared