Vincent Czarnecki

Hello!

My name is Vinny Czarnecki. 

I am a third year PhD student at Rutgers University in the Linguistics Department. Before my time at Rutgers, I received a BS in Pure Mathematics and an MA in Computational Linguistics at Stony Brook University. My main research interests lie at the intersection of Linguistics, Mathematics, Theoretical Computer Science, and Philosophy. 

Narrow:

I am interested in using mathematical tools such as formal language & automata theory, finite model theory, abstract algebra, etc. to understand the computational structure and complexity of natural language, with an eye on phonology and syntax. Currently, my research focuses on using model-theoretic interpretations to understand the formal properties of the syntax-phonology interface. Assuming that syntax and phonology don't have unlimited access between one other, how can we formally understand their interaction and its limits? How does this interact with our current understanding of the typology of phrasal phonological patterns? This has led to most of my time being spent thinking about things like: linearization, phrasal phonology, modularity, recursion, etc.

Broad:

I am not interested in using computers to just do language stuff, I’m interested in using computation as a means to describe how humans do language stuff. This boils down to asking: what sorts of patterns do we expect to see in natural language and why? As an example, it is very common for languages to have patterns where a sound that you use depends on something very close by to it. In English, you pluralize 'cat' with 's', but 'dog' with 'z', and 'dish' with 'iz'. But there is no language where you pluralize a word based on whether the number of vowels in it is even or odd-- something like: if a word has an even number of vowels it gets pluralized with 's', but if it has an odd number of vowels it gets pluralized with 'z'. Computationally speaking, the second is a lot harder to do! I use some of the mathematical tools mentioned above to understand and describe the difference between patterns like this more broadly in language.

When I’m not doing linguistics related stuff, I like to play the guitar (I play guitar Long Island Post-Rock band Golden Hymns Sing 'Hurrah’). I also made the album art shown here!