Matthew Wagers

Matthew Wagers is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he focuses on syntax, psycholinguistics, and memory mechanisms in language processing. His research explores how linguistic features act as 'traffic signals' for memory access, with particular emphasis on syntactic boundaries, resumptive pronouns, and cross-linguistic comparisons in Austronesian and Zapotec languages.

• Education:
  • Ph.D. in Linguistics, University of Maryland (2008), supervised by Colin Phillips
  • A.B. in Molecular Biology, Princeton University (2003), with Certificates in Neuroscience and Linguistics

Wagers leads the z/lab, conducting NSF-funded research (BCS 2019804) on animacy and resumption in Zapotec and Hebrew. He has directed a UCOP MRPI Planning Grant (2025-2027) to leverage California's linguistic diversity for improving large language models. His lab investigates memory systems in languages like Chamorro, Tagalog, and Georgian, producing 15+ recent publications on topics spanning filler-gap dependencies, subject islands, and discourse anaphora.

• Key Research Themes:
  • Working memory in syntactic encoding and retrieval
  • Role of morphological cues in parsing
  • Experimental methods in understudied languages
  • Signal detection theory in acceptability judgments
  • Temporal dynamics of agreement and focus

He teaches courses in psycholinguistics, syntax, and experimental methods, and serves as Faculty Director for Curriculum and Enrollment in UCSC's Division of Humanities (2025-2026). His lab alumni include researchers now at institutions like Saarland University and Oxford, with recent graduates defending dissertations on memory for covert dependencies, Turkish wh-in-situ processing, and structural prediction mechanisms.