mitcho Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine

Hello!

I am a Researcher in linguistics at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Nantes University’s Laboratoire de Linguistique de Nantes. 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.

Teaching (2026)

• June 1–2: focus workshop at the University of Geneva
• August: DGfS summer school, Bielefeld

Recent

• Paper accepted, July 2026: “Japanese contrast sluicing and pair-list questions” with Teruyuki Mizuno, in Linguistic Inquiry!
• Talks, June+ 2026:
  • “Word order and interpretation order in Japanese scrambling”, invited talk at WAFL 19
  • “Learning the A- vs Ā- movement distinction” at RALFe 9
  • “Emergence of passive voice in Central Borneo” with Alex Smith, JLAO 39
• Talk, April 2026: “Atayalic subjects and the nature of nominative”, at GLOW 48
• Talk, March 2026: “Learning to move,” at the Formal Linguistics in the Nordic Countries (FLiNC) colloquium
• I have moved! I am now a CNRS Researcher (chargé de recherche) at CNRS & Nantes University’s Laboratoire de Linguistique de Nantes. (My previous nus.edu.sg email does not work.)
• Paper revised, January 2026: “Atayalic subjects and the nature of nominative”; comments welcome!
• Paper published, January 2026: “Bornean passives in comparative perspective” with Alex Smith, has appeared in a new Festschrift for Jim Huang
• Paper published, December 2025: “Voice and extraction in Malayic” with Carly Sommerlot, has appeared in (the last physical issue of) Language!
• Paper published, November 2025: “Interpreting Tagalog clitic cluster combinations” with Henrison Hsieh
• 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!

Less recent but still pretty good

• “Focus intervention, multiple association, and the unity of focus and wh alternatives” in Linguistics and Philosophy, 2025
• “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