Research
My research primarily focuses on phonology, the study of sound-structure systems in language, and syntax, the study of sentence structure. Additionally, I am interested in linguistic fieldwork on the languages of Mesoamerica, in particular languages belonging to the Oto-Manguean language family. Other areas that I focus on includes questions concerning the Celtic and Germanic languages from the Indo-European family.
Phonological interfaces
One of the major areas of my research is investigation the interaction of phonology with the other components of grammar. This includes how phonology influences (and is influenced by) phonetics, morphology, and syntax.
Syntactic and Prosodic movement of pronominals
One area of particular interest is providing syntactic and phonological accounts for the displacement of pronominals. Two of the interesting cases involve pronominal Object Shift and Negatitive Indefintite Shifting in Scandinavian languages. I collaborated with Eirik Tengesdal from Universitetet i Oslo on providing an analysis of pronominal object shift and its interaction with verbal particles and adverbs in Mainland Scandinavian.
- Brinkerhoff, Mykel Loren & Eirik Tengesdal. 2021. Matching Phrases in Norwegian Object Shift. In Ryan Bennett, Richard Bibbs, Mykel Loren Brinkerhoff, Max J. Kaplan, Stephanie Rich, Amanda Rysling, Nicholas Van Handel & Maya Wax Cavallaro (eds.), Supplemental Proceedings of the 2020 Annual Meeting on Phonology. Washington, DC: Linguistic Society of America. https://doi.org/10.3765/amp.v9i0.4921. | Bibtex | Pre-publication | Post-publication |
Santiago Laxopa Zapotec
I am a member of the Zapotec Language Project at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In conjunction with Maya Wax Cavallaro and John (Jack) Duff, we are working on understanding the tonal system in Santiago Laxopa Zapotec and how it interacts with the syntax-prosody interface, word and sentence stress, and phonation.