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Michael Putnam

Foto: Michael Putnam

The Pennsylvania State University
The Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures

Senior Fellow
June 2025

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Michael T. Putnam

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DSA Projekt: "Decomposing umlaut"

My project seeks to gain a deeper and more precise understanding of the linguistic phenomena that are commonly associated with the cover term ‘umlaut’. More specifically, I advocate for an interpretation of umlaut that involves phonological, morphological, and in some instances, syntactic attributes. This proposal enhances, and in some ways, challenges previous analyses of its diachronic development. During my time at the DSA, I am excited to collaborate with scholars interested in the synchronic variation of German dialects as well as other colleagues who are interested primarily in morphological and phonological processing. 

  • CV

    I am Professor of German & Linguistics at Penn State University. I am also currently the Director of the Linguistics Program, Associate Director of the Center for Language Science, and co-Director of the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies. My research aims to better understand how linguistic information (captured in 'features') mediates between morph(phon)ology (in order to be pronounced; i.e., 'realization') and semantics (in order to be interpreted; i.e., 'denotation'). Simply put, how do these sub-systems fit together into a larger, more cohesive system? How does their interaction with one another, in the form structural representations of different sorts, create natural language as we know it? I seek to gain insight into the relationship that exists between these representations, e.g., how much does phonology or semantics 'know' about morphological structure? My research investigates these questions in both monolingual and bi/multilingual individuals and populations.

  • Forschungsinteressen

    - Morphology & Syntax
    - Morphology-Phonology Interface
    - Bi/Multilingualism (including heritage languages)
    - Global Varieties of German(ic)
    - Mental Lexicon
    - Morphological & Lexical Processing

  • Publikationen (Auswahl)

    Putnam, M.T., & Natvig, D. 2025. An introduction to language attrition: linguistic, social, and cognitive perspectives. London: Routledge.

    Lohndal, T., & Putnam, M.T. 2024. On the importance of features and exponents: Dissolving Feature Reassembly. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 14(1): 1-36.

    Fisher, R., Natvig, D., Pretorius, P., Putnam, M.T., & Schuhmann, K. 2022. Why is inflectional morphology difficult to borrow? – Distributing and lexicalizing plural allomorphy in Pennsylvania Dutch. Languages, 7(86): 1-25.

    Putnam, M.T., & Page, B.R. (eds.) 2020. The Cambridge handbook of Germanic linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Bousquette, J., & Putnam, M.T. 2020. Redefining language death: Evidence from moribund grammars. Language Learning, 70(S1): 185-228.