Sam Kennedy

Linguistics

S310 Elliott Hall

75 East River Parkway
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Collegiate Affiliation

Sam is a fifth-year PhD student specializing in syntax, with a particular focus on word order, linearization, and Spell-Out. He has worked on Taiwanese, Mandarin, Dakota, Ewe, and Hmong.

Educational Background & Specialties

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Educational Background

B.A.: Geography and Chinese, Vassar College, 2015
M.A.: Linguistics, University of Minnesota, 2023

Specialties

Morphosyntax, linearization/Spell-Out, argument structure, Sinitic languages, Dakota

Publications

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Publications

[Under review] Kennedy, Samuel. Aspect marking on Taiwanese complementizer kóng.
Submitted to Coyote Papers 26: Proceedings of ALC 18.
[Under review] Kennedy, Samuel, Dustin Morrow & Antonia Lowell. Relative heads as DPs in
Ewe. Submitted to Selected Papers from the 56th Annual Conference on African Linguistics.
Kennedy, Samuel. (2025). Taiwanese complementizer kóng, sentence-final particles, and the
Final-over-Final Condition. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 10 (1): 5946.

Activities

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Activities

Professional

Linguistics graduate student representative. January 2024 - September 2025
Syntax-Semantics Reading Group organizer. September 2022 - September 2025
Institute of Linguistics Colloquium Series co-organizer. June 2022 - Present

Research

Presentation: [Under review] Kennedy, Samuel. Mandarin T3 sandhi via asymmetric c-command. Submitted to West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 44. Mexico City, Mexico.
Presentation: [Under review] Kennedy, Samuel. Cross-clausal aspectual dependencies in Taiwanese. Submitted to Conference on Language, Discourse, and Cognition 12. Taipei, Taiwan.
Presentation: [Under review] Kennedy, Samuel. Phasal DPs as Taiwanese tone sandhi domains. Submitted to Chicago Linguistic Society 62. Chicago, IL.
Presentation: Kennedy, Samuel. Aspect marking on Taiwanese complementizer kóng. Arizona Linguistics Circle 18. Tucson, Arizona. October 16, 2025.
Presentation: Kennedy, Samuel, Dustin Morrow & Antonia Lowell. Relative heads as DPs in Ewe [poster]. Annual Conference on African Linguistics 56. Minneapolis, MN. May 17, 2025.
Presentation: Kennedy, Samuel. Taiwanese complementizer kóng, sentence-final particles, and the Final-over-Final Condition. Linguistic Society of America 2025. Philadelphia, PA. January 11, 2025.

Awards

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Awards

Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, 2024-2025
Institute of Linguistics Summer Research Fellowship, Summer 2023 and Summer 2024
Institute of Linguistics Fellowship, 2023-2024

Courses

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Courses

LING 3001: Introduction to Linguistics (TA)
LING 4302: Phonology I (TA)
LING 3601: Historical Linguistics (TA)
LING 1701: Language and Society (TA)
LING 1705: World Englishes (TA)