Andrea Sims

Andrea Sims

Andrea Sims

Professor

sims.120@osu.edu

314 Oxley Hall
1712 Neil Ave.
Columbus, OH
43210

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Office Hours

By appointment. On sabbatical 2024-25

Areas of Expertise

  • Morphological theory
  • Quantitative morphology and quantitative typology
  • Emergent properties of inflectional systems
  • Structure of the lexicon
  • South Slavic linguistics, Russian linguistics

Education

  • Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, Northwestern University, 2006-08
  • Ph.D. in Linguistics, The Ohio State University, 2006
  • M.A. in Russian Linguistics, The Ohio State University, 2003
  • M.A. in Linguistics, The Ohio State University, 2001
  • A.B. in Anthropology, The University of Chicago, 1999

About Me

I am fascinated by morphological systems and investigate them from synchronic, diachronic, and typological perspective.

When morphology develops out of phonology or syntax, a frequent hallmark of this change is the splintering of a single, broad generalization into a series of more fragmentary and morpholexically-specific generalizations. The resulting 'idiosyncracies', far from being exceptions, have the potential to tell us how lexical distributions shape the emergence, evolution, reinforcement, and generalization of morphological structures. (This makes me an inveterate fox in Isaiah Berlin's fox-hedgehog continuum.) I use a variety of methods to explore these issues, including quantitative methods, graph-theoretic modeling, computational modeling (in collaboration with colleagues), and classic linguistic description. Reflecting a 'morphocentric' perspective, I tend to engage with aspects of morphological structure that cannot be reduced to phonology or syntax. 

I have worked on inflection class structure (e.g. using information theory and graph theory); inflectional defectiveness (paradigmatic gaps), syncretism, and other form-meaning mismatches; the morphological structure of the lexicon; derivational affix combinability restrictions; and cross-linguistic differences in morphological organization. I work mostly on South Slavic/Balkan languages -- especially Croatian (Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin) -- Russian, and Greek, and sometimes other languages. 

With the help of some awesome collaborators, I am currently working to incorporate information about sign languages' morphology into the next edition of my textbook, Understanding Morphology.

I was honored to be inducted as a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America in 2025.

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