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Naomi Lee is a linguist. As a morphologist, she works with theory and typology, learning experiments, and computational simulations. These methods allow her to investigate the substance and the structure of our linguistic mental representations. Her morphology research asks: What do language acquirers assume when approaching learning grammatical categories like number, gender, and declension class? How do these representations and learning biases constrain and affect the input-divergent “mistakes” or innovations that arise in children’s and heritage speakers’ mental grammars? She has presented her experimental work, which investigates these questions using artificial language learning paradigms and computational modeling, at international conferences including North East Linguistics Society (NELS) and Diachronic Generative Syntax (DiGS).
As a sociolinguist, her research interests include morphological and syntactic variation in English, as well as the formation of an Asian American ethnolinguistic repertoire. She and her co-author Dr. Laurel MacKenzie have presented their work on the social and/or syntactic factors conditioning variation in the English particle verb alternation at international conferences including New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) and the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) Annual Meeting, with a recent article (“Social conditioning of English particle verb variation fails to replicate”, with Laurel MacKenzie) published in the Canadian Journal of Linguistics / Revue canadienne de linguistique.
She received her A.B. in Linguistics from Princeton University, and her Ph.D. in Linguistics from New York University.
In addition to first-year writing, she teaches courses on theoretical linguistics; on sociolinguistics; and on quantitative, experimental, and computational methods in linguistics.
Education
Ph.D., Linguistics, New York University New York United States
A.B., Linguistics, Princeton University Princeton United States
| Semester | Course Prefix | Course Number | Course Name |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spring 2025 | ENG | 4950 | Advanced Topics in Language, L |
| Fall 2024 | ENG | 2150 | Writing II |
| Fall 2024 | ENG | 3960 | Topics in Language |
| Spring 2024 | COM | 3750 | Structure & History Of English |
| Spring 2024 | ENG | 3750 | Structure & History of English |
| Spring 2024 | ENG | 2150T | Writing II |
| Fall 2023 | ENG | 2100T | Writing I |
| Fall 2023 | ENG | 3700 | Introduction to Linguistics: T |
| Fall 2023 | COM | 3700 | Linguistics & Lang Learning |
Journal Articles
Lee, N., & Mackenzie, L. (2023). Social role effects on English particle verb variation fail to replicate. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique, 68(2). 329-343.
Presentations
Lee, N. The Nanosyntactic prediction that each language can only have one declension class containing gender doublets is false. The 55th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS 55), Yale. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts GLSA Publications.
Lee, N., & MacKenzie, L. (2025, January 7). The English particle verb alternation shows sensitivity to syntactic classes over semantic compositionality. Linguistic Society of America (LSA) 96th Annual Meeting. Washington, D.C.
Lee, N. (2025, August 7). Learning (im)possible number & gender syncretisms: Investigating innate featural representations. Experimental approaches to language Universals in structure and meaning (ExUni workshop at ESSLLI2021). Utrecht, Netherlands
Lee, N., & MacKenzie, L. (2025, October 21). Does the English particle verb alternation show gradient sensitivity to compositionality?. New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 49, UT Austin. Austin, TX
Lee, N. (2025, November 7). Learning (im)possible number syncretisms: investigating innate featural representations.. North East Linguistics Society (NELS) 51, UQAM. Montreal
Lee, N., & Cournane, A. (2025, June 5). The journey, not the endstate: finding innovation in the dynamics of L1A. Diachronic Generative Syntax (DiGS) 21, ASU. Tempe, AZ
Lee, N. (2025, March 23). Khoekhoe participant phi-features: evidence from allomorphy & possession. Penn Linguistics Conference (PLC) 43. Philadelphia, PA
Lee, N. (2025, January 5). Khoekhoe pronominal morphosyntax: gender on Root-attached little n. Linguistic Society of America (LSA) 93rd Annual Meeting. New York, NY
Lee, N. (2025, December 9). Old English Poetic Alliteration as Correspondence. 19th SYNC (Stony Brook, Yale, NYU, CUNY) Conference, Yale. New Haven, CT
College
| Committee Name | Position Role | Start Date | End Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baruch Undergraduate Admissions — College for a Day | Faculty Presenter | 11/3/2023 |