PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Michael Hammond

Also known as Mike Hammond

Michael Hammond is a linguist whose work links phonology with computational methods for language. He earned a BA in linguistics from UCLA in 1979 and a PhD in 1984, taught at Minnesota and Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and headed the University of Arizona's Department of Linguistics from 2001 to 2011. His work included a computational model of English and French syllable parsing in 1995, a probabilistic model of English phonotactics in 2009, neural question-answering research in 2017, Python for Linguists in 2020, low-resource grapheme-to-phoneme mapping in 2021, and PyFoma in 2024. As of October 2026, he is Professor Emeritus in the University of Arizona's Department of Linguistics.

Born
1957
Works
155
Citations
2,014
h-index
21
Badges

Years link to their sources. Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1979–1988

    UCLA and early faculty roles

    He earns a BA in linguistics from UCLA in 1979 and a PhD there in 1984. From 1983 to 1984, he serves as a visiting assistant professor in the University of Minnesota's Department of Linguistics; from 1984 to 1988, he serves as an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

  2. 1995

    A computational syllable parser

    In 1995, he proposes an Optimality Theory account of syllable parsing in English and French, backed by a computational implementation.

  3. 2001–2011

    Arizona department head

    He heads the University of Arizona's Department of Linguistics from 2001 to 2011. In a 2009 paper, he models experimental English phonotactic judgments with Probabilistic Optimality Theory.

  4. 2017

    Neural answer justification

    In 2017, he coauthors “Tell Me Why,” which uses answer ranking as distant supervision to learn to select informative justifications. A neural network reranks justifications as an interpretable step in answer selection.

  5. 2020

    Python for linguists

    He publishes Python for Linguists in 2020, a programming introduction designed for linguists. Its examples use language data that readers can adapt for research.

  6. 2021

    Neural grapheme-to-phoneme mapping

    In 2021, he authors a paper that explores neural grapheme-to-phoneme mapping in low-resource languages through data augmentation.

  7. 2024

    Coauthoring PyFoma

    With Mans Hulden, Michael Ginn and Miikka Silfverberg, he coauthors PyFoma in 2024, an open-source Python module for finite-state transducers and automata used in linguistics and NLP applications.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor emeritus at Arizona

    As of October 2026, he is Professor Emeritus in the University of Arizona's Department of Linguistics. His research includes phonology, morphology and computational linguistics.

Career

  1. Since 2001University of ArizonaDepartment head
  2. 1984–1988University of Wisconsin–MilwaukeeAssistant professor
  3. 1983–1984University of MinnesotaVisiting assistant professor

Education

  1. 1984University of California, Los AngelesPhD

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Most-cited works

  1. The phonology of English: a prosodic optimality-theoretic approach1999 · Oxford University Press eBooks · 239 citations
  2. Theoretical Morphology: Approaches in Modern Linguistics1988 · Medical Entomology and Zoology · 195 citations
  3. On deriving the well-formedness condition1988 · Linguistic Inquiry · 157 citations
  4. Phonotactic probabilities in young children's speech production2004 · Journal of Child Language · 131 citations
  5. On looking into words (and beyond)2017 · 100 citationsWith Claire Bowern

From OpenAlex, as of 21 October 2026.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes University of Arizona. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes University of Arizona. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of Arizona. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes University of California, Los Angeles. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Michael Hammond (linguist) en.wikipedia.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Linguistic Institute 2011: Faculty Listings verbs.colorado.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Syllable parsing in English and French arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. GRADIENCE, PHONOTACTICS, AND THE LEXICON IN ENGLISH PHONOLOGY revistas.um.es. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Tell Me Why: Using Question Answering as Distant Supervision for Answer Justification aclanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. LINGUIST List 31.2625: Books: Python for Linguists: Hammond linguistlist.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Data augmentation for low-resource grapheme-to-phoneme mapping aclanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. PyFoma: a Python finite-state compiler module aclanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Mike Hammond | Mike’s homepage hammondm.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.