About

Rolf Noyer is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests encompass theoretical areas such as Morphology, Phonology, Morphosyntax, and Generative Metrics. He has a particular focus on language areas including Huave (Mexico) and Mansi (Siberia). Noyer is involved in projects like the Ingreso al Diccionario Comparativo-Histórico de la Lengua Huave, although the electronic dictionary is currently in maintenance and not available. He has contributed to the field through his work on the structure of language and linguistic theory. In addition to his research, Noyer offers courses related to phonology and morphology, including classes on the sound structure of language, Proto-Indo-European language and society, and seminars in morphology and phonology. He is a member of the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science. Noyer also promotes practical tools for linguistic work, such as his Aksharantara Keyboard Layout for Mac for typing Devanagari script.

Research topics

• Linguistics
• Computer science
• Natural language processing
• History
• Artificial intelligence

Selected publications

• Phonological and Morphological Interaction in Proto-Indo-European Accentuation

  The MIT Press eBooks · 2013-07-19

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• Phonological and Morphological Interaction in Proto-Indo-European Accentuation

  The MIT Press eBooks · 2013-08-16

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  Abstract The reconstruction of the grammar of word accentuation in Proto-Indo-European (PIE) has for years been a central topic in historical linguistics, as well as the focus of a number of studies within generative phonology of the daughter languages that preserve relicts of the anterior system. The Schindler-Rix reconstruction is the basis of the analysis presented here. The chapter follows the recent detailed presentation of Ringe. The chapter aims to widen the scope of discussion to include the role of cyclic and noncyclic phonology in producing the accent classes of derived stems in PIE. The chapter departs from earlier studies in a number of ways.

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• A Generative Phonology of San Mateo Huave

  International Journal of American Linguistics · 2013-01-01 · 89 citations

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  A comprehensive analysis of the word-level phonology of the San Mateo dialect of Huave, a language isolate of Mexico, is presented within the framework of lexical phonology (Kiparsky 1982 and Halle and Vergnaud 1987), based on my fieldwork as well as data from published sources, chiefly Stairs Kreger and Stairs (1981). Affixes and other morphological processes are shown to fall into three groups (cyclic, non-cyclic, and clitic), according to their phonological behavior. Numerous derivational opacities are exhibited and analyzed through ordered rules with both cyclic and non-cyclic modes of application. Other noteworthy phenomena include a pervasive contrast in consonantal secondary articulation interacting extensively with vowel place features; an autosegmental diminutivization process; reduplication and infixation; an unusually complex system of vowel harmony and vowel copying; and evidence for a lexical-difusion change in progress in vowel harmony classes.[Keywords: Huave, phonology, diminutives, vowel harmony, derivational opacity]

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• Distributed Morphology and the Syntax—Morphology Interface

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2007-02-22 · 722 citations

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  A theory of the syntax/morphology interface is first, a theory of how ‘words’ and their internal structure – the traditional domain of morphology – relate to the structures generated by the syntax, and second, a theory of how the rules for deriving complex words relate to the rules for deriving syntactic structures. A prominent line of research in this area consists of approaches assuming some version of the Lexicalist Hypothesis. For present purposes, this is the claim that (at least some) words are special in ways that e.g. phrases are not, and that this ‘specialness’ calls for an architecture in which the derivation of words and the derivation of syntactic objects occur in different modules of the grammar (the Lexicon versus the syntax).1 While the ‘words’ derived in the Lexicon serve as the terminals in the syntactic derivation, there is a sharp division between syntax and morphology according to Lexicalist approaches of this type. In this way, the interface between syntax and morphology in such a theory is opaque or indirect: there is no reason to expect the structure and composition of ‘words’ to relate to the structure and composition of syntactic objects in any transparent or for that matter systematic fashion. A second line of research advances the hypothesis that ‘words’ are assembled by rules of the syntax. Thus the ‘word’ is not a privileged derivational object as far as the architecture of the grammar is concerned, since all complex objects, whether words and phrases, are treated as the output of the same generative system (the syntax). According to this view, which we assume here, the theory of the syntax/morphology interface might better be said to be a theory of (1) the primitive elements of the syntactic derivation (the traditional question of the morpheme); (2) the principles governing the assembly of these primitives into complex objects (the question of what structures the syntax and perhaps PF rules can derive); and (3) the manner in which phonological forms relate to the primitives and to the complex objects constructed from the primitives. Such an approach allows for a transparent (or direct) interface between syntax and morphology, because it hypothesizes that the same generative system derives all complex objects.2 In the default case, then, the principles that govern the composition of ‘words’ are the same as those that govern the composition of larger syntactic objects.

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• A constraint on interclass syncretism

  Yearbook of morphology · 2005-01-01 · 34 citations

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• Epenthesis and syllable structure in northern Vogul

  Doria (University of Helsinki) · 2004-01-01

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• Distributed Morphology

  2003-12-31 · 179 citations

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• Generative metrics and Old French octosyllabic verse

  Language Variation and Change · 2002-07-01 · 6 citations

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  Both Old French meters and their Modern French descendants are usually thought to lack the internal binary constituent structure of, say, English or German iambic verse. In this article, however, an underlying iambic structure for the Old French octosyllable is established through quantitative analysis of a large corpus of texts written from c. 975 to 1180 (42 distinct works, including over 22,000 lines). Because no texts conform absolutely to the grammar of English iambic verse (Halle & Keyser, 1971; Kiparsky, 1977), certain measures are proposed for the degree to which a sample deviates from the iambic pattern; these values are then compared with the (chance) deviation of normal Old French prose. A significant correlation emerges between these measures and date of composition, author, and genre: early texts are almost perfectly iambic, and late 12th-century texts approach, but do not reach, chance levels. It is concluded that the grammar of meter used by Old French authors underwent a gradual change during the 12th century, a change comparable to more familiar phonological and syntactic changes.

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• Clitic Sequences in Nunggubuyu and PF Convergence

  Natural Language & Linguistic Theory · 2001-11-01 · 48 citations

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• Movement Operations after Syntax

  Linguistic Inquiry · 2001-10-01 · 1316 citations

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  We develop a theory of movement operations that occur after the syntactic derivation, in the PF component, within the framework of Distributed Morphology.The theory is an extension of what was called Morphological Merger in Marantz 1984 and subsequent work.A primary result is that the locality properties of a Merger operation are determined by the stage in the derivation at which the operation takes place: specifically, Merger that takes place before Vocabulary Insertion, on hierarchical structures, differs from Merger that takes place post—Vocabulary Insertion/linearization.Specific predictions of the model are tested in numerous case studies.Analyses showing the interaction of syntactic movement, PF movement, and rescue operations are provided as well, including a treatment of Englishdo-support.

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Frequent coauthors

• David Embick

  6 shared

• Heidi Harley

  4 shared

• Martha McGinnis

  1 shared

• Jeffrey Lidz

  University of Maryland, College Park

  1 shared

• Lisa S. Davidson

  Washington University in St. Louis

  1 shared

• Angeliek van Hout

  University of Groningen

  1 shared

Labs

• Department of Linguistics, University of PennsylvaniaPI

Education

• Ph.D., Theoretical phonology, morphology, morphosyntax, generative metrics; Huave, Mansi

  MIT

  1992