mitcho Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine

Hello!

I am an Associate Professor of English Language & Linguistics at the National University of Singapore. I received my Ph.D. from MIT in 2014. My work investigates the structure of sentences (syntax) and how these structures map to meaning (semantics), with particular interest in understudied languages of (Southeast) Asia. I serve as Associate Editor of the Journal of Semantics and Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of East Asian Linguistics.

Areas of interest

• Syntax, semantics, and their interface; grammatical variation, learning, and change; languages of (Southeast) Asia
• Movement: (anti-)locality, (anti-)pied-piping, extraction restrictions, interactions with case and agreement, the interpretation of movement chains
• Focus and alternatives: focus particles, questions, wh-quantification, disjunction, discourse organization (QUDs), implicature calculation

My work has investigated:

• Mandarin Chinese; Vietnamese; Japanese; English; Singlish (Colloquial Singapore English);
• Austronesian: Toba Batak, Rejang (Sumatra), Bikol, Kapampangan, Pangasinan, Tagalog (Philippines), Desa, Kayan, Lebo’ Vo’ (Borneo), and Squliq Atayal (Taiwan);
• Tibeto-Burman: Tibetan and Burmese;
• Mayan: Kaqchikel and Chuj (Guatemala)

See the Projects page for descriptions of projects and downloadable papers.

Upcoming talks

• November 7: Nanyang Technological University
• December 16: University of Potsdam

Recent

• Paper published, November 2025: “Interpreting Tagalog clitic cluster combinations” with Henrison Hsieh
• New paper, October 2025: “Atayalic subjects and the nature of nominative”; comments welcome!
• Paper published, October 2025: “On the role of causation in sufficiency and excess”, in the volume Generative Perspectives on Degrees: The Semantics and Morphosyntax of Scalarity
• Paper published, September 2025: “Varieties of question bias: Lessons from Vietnamese” with Anne Nguyen has appeared in Languages!
• Paper accepted, September 2025: “Voice and extraction in Malayic” with Carly Sommerlot, now in press with Language!
• July 2025: I now serve as an Associate Editor for Natural Language & Linguistic Theory!
• Paper published, July 2025: “Focus intervention, multiple association, and the unity of focus and wh alternatives”, in Linguistics and Philosophy!
• Talk, July 21: Goethe University Frankfurt syntax colloquium
• Talk, July 8–10: Plenary talk at the 38th Journées de linguistique d’Asie orientale (JLAO), Paris
• Talks, June 2025: five talks on various topics, around Tokyo
• Paper published, June 2025: “Toba Batak manang: Notes on its uses and form”, in Studies in Language!
• Paper accepted, May 2025: “Interrogative and standard disjunction in Mandarin Chinese”, now in press with Journal of Semantics
• New paper, April 2025: draft handbook chapter on Tagalog clitics, with Henrison Hsieh. Comments welcome!
• Talk, April 2025: on Mandarin disjunction at Lund
• Talk, March 2025: on Tibetan and Austronesian relativization at CRLAO

Less recent but still pretty good

• “Ā-probing for the closest DP” with Kenyon Branan in Linguistic Inquiry, 2024
• “Anti-pied-piping” with Kenyon Branan in Language, 2023
• “Bikol clefts and topics and the Austronesian extraction restriction” with Cheryl Lim, in Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 2023