Matías Guzmán Naranjo

About

I am a morphologist, typologist and corpus linguist. I got my PhD in linguistics in Leipzig and I am currently working as a computational typologist at the University of Freiburg. My dissertation was on formalizing analogy in an HPSG/CxG framework, while providing a solid computational implementation for it. In addition to quantitative morphology, I also work on HPSG and computational typology. You can find my CV here. You can write me at: mguzmann89 [at] g m a i l (.) c o m If you cite my research/write me an email: 'Guzmán Naranjo' are my two last names, 'Matías' is my given name.

You can write me at: mguzmann89 [at] g m a i l (.) c o m.

If you cite my research/write me an email: 'Guzmán Naranjo' are my two last names, 'Matías' is my given name.

Present projects

I am the principal investigator of the Emmy Noether project "Bayesian modeling of spatial typology" at the University of Freiburg. My current project centers around building computational, Bayesian models of spatial phenomena, including: language contact, spatial difussion of linguistic varieties and dialectal variation. Other research interests include: quantitative morphology, analogy and computational typology.

Software

Analogy-based Morphology in TRALE
Automatic morphological analysis: Paradigma
Use Guile (scheme) to extend R: RcppGuile
An emacs mode for inserting ipa symbols company-ipa

Tutorials

The following are tutorials I have written on different statistical modelling techniques for linguistics.

Gaussian Processes with Stan: link
Phylogenetic regression with Stan: link
MultivAreate model with Stan: link

Publications

Dissertation

Analogy in formal grammar [link]

Books and edited volumes

Analogical Classification in Formal Grammar. 2019. Langsci Press. Link.

Barnickel, Katja, Matías Guzmán Naranjo, Johannes Hein, Sampson Korsah, Andrew Murphy, Ludger Paschen, Zorica Puškar & Joanna Zaleska (eds.). 2016. Replicative Processes in Grammar. Vol. 93 (Linguistische Arbeits Berichte). Leipzig:Universität Leipzig.

Papers

Beniamine, Sacha, Brown, Dunstan, Guzmán Naranjo, Matías, & Sims, Andrea. 2025. Zalilex: Russian Nominal Paradigms Lexicon (1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15235590
Fedden, Sebastian, Matías Guzmán Naranjo & Greville G. Corbett. 2025. Typology meets dstatistical modeling: the German gender system. Language. 101(2), p. 251-290. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lan.2025.a962898.
Urban, Matthias & Matías Guzmán Naranjo. 2025. Gradient in grammatical structure of Indigenous languages traces pathway of human expansion in the Americas. Nature Scientific Reports. 15, 14365. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-86265-8.
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías, Laura Becker, Miriam Schiele & I-Ying Lin. 2025. Why modeling space is hard: Polynesian phoneme inventories as a test case. Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2024-0016
Becker, Laura & Matías Guzmán Naranjo. 2025. Replication and methodological robustness in typology. Linguistic Typology. link
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías. 2024. An analogical approach to the typology of inflectional complexity . Journal of Language Modelling 12(2). 20240032.
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías & Miri Mertner & Matthias Urban. 2024. Spatial effects with missing data. Open Linguistics 10(1). 20240032.
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías & Gerhard Jäger. 2023. Euclide, the crow, the wolf and the pedestrian: distance metrics for linguistic typology. Open Research Europe 3(104). Link. Preprint.
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías & Olivier Bonami. 2023. A distributional assessment of rivalry in word formation. Word Structure 16(1). 87-114. Link. Preprint
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías & Søren Wichmann. 2023. The half-way similarity avoidance rule replicated using phonetic data from European language varieties. Language Dynamics and Change 14(1). 1-30. Link. Preprint
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías & Miri Mertner. 2023. Estimating areal effects in typology: A case study of African phoneme inventories. Linguistic Typology 27(2). 455-480. Link.
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías & Laura Becker. 2021. Statistical bias control in typology. Linguistic Typology 26(3). 605-670. Link. Preprint
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías & Olivier Bonami. 2021. Overabundance and inflectional classification: Quantitative evidence from Czech. Glossa 6(1). 88. Link. Pdf.
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías and Laura Becker. 2021. Coding efficiency in nominal inflection: Expectedness and type frequency effects. 2021. Linguistic Vanguard 7(s3). link
Becker, Laura & Matías Guzmán Naranjo. 2020. Psych predicates in European languages. STUF - Language Typology and Universals 73(4). 483-523. Link.
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías. 2020. Analogy, complexity and predictability in the Russian nominal inflection system. 2020. Morphology 30. 219–262. Link
Barnickel, Katja & Matías Guzmán Naranjo. 2017. Resolving unexpected case concord in German A-N-N compounds. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 20(2). 83-138. Link. The code and data can be found Here. Pdf.
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías. 2017. The se-ra alternation in Spanish subjunctive. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 13(1). 97-134. Link. Pdf.
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías. 2013. La subjetivización del de que en el español de Colombia. Linguamatica 5(2). Link.

Book chapters

Becker, Laura, Matías Guzmán Naranjo & Samira Ochs. 2023. Socio-linguistic effects on conditional constructions: A quantitative typological study. In Silvia Ballarè & Guglielmo Inglese (eds.), `Sociolinguistic and typological perspectives on language variation, 121-154. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. Link.
Bonami, Olivier & Matías Guzmán Naranjo. 2023. Distributional evidence for derivational paradigms. In Sven Kotowsky and Ingo Plag (eds.), The semantics of derivational morphology: Theory, methods, evidence, vol. 586 (Linguistische Arbeiten), 219-258. Berlin, De Gruyter. Link.
Murphy, Andrew, Zorica Puškar & Matías Guzmán Naranjo. 2018. Gender encoding on hybrid nouns in Bosnian / Croatian / Serbian: Experimental evidence from ellipsis. In Denisa Lenertová, Roland Meyer, Radek Šimík & Luka Szucsich (eds.), Advances in formal Slavic linguistics 2016, vol. 1 (Open Slavic Linguistics), 313-336. Berlin, Language Science Press. Link.

Peer reviewed proceedings papers

Sacha Beniamine & Matías Guzmán Naranjo. 2021. Multiple alignments of inflectional paradigms. In Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics (SCiL) 4. 216-227. Link. Video. Pdf.
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías. 2019. Analogy-based Morphology: The Kasem number system. In Stefan Müller (ed) Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, 26–41. University of Bucharest, Romania. Pdf.
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías & Laura Becker. 2018. Quantitative Word Order Typology with UD. 2018. Proceedings of the 17th International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories (TLT 2018), December 13–14, 2018, Oslo University, Norway. Pages 91-104. Link. Pdf.
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías. 2015. Quantitative Evidence, Collostructional Analysis and Lexical Approaches to Argument Structure. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories (TLT14). Warsaw. Link. Pdf.
Zaleska, Joanna & Matías Guzmán Naranjo. 2015. Naturalness bias in palatalization: An experimental study. Nordlyd 42. Link Pdf.

Other proceedings papers

Guzmán Naranjo, Matías. 2015. Unifying everything: Integrating quantitative effects into formal models of grammar. In Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Quantitative Investigations in Theoretical Linguistics. Tübingen. Link Pdf.
Paschen, Ludger & Matías Guzmán Naranjo. 2016. Closing by repetition: A formal account of replicative mechanisms in closing sequences. In Katja Barnickel, Matías Guzmán Naranjo, Johannes Hein, Sampson Korsah, Andrew Murphy, Ludger Paschen, Zorica Puškar and Joanna Zaleska (eds.) Replicative Processes in Grammar 93 (Linguistische Arbeitsberichte). Universität Leipzig. Pdf
Guzmán Naranjo, Matías. 2014. The se-ra alternation in Spanish subjunctive. In Anke Assmann, Sebastian Bank, Doreen Georgi, Timo Klein, Philip Weisser and Eva Zimmermann (eds.) Topics at InfL 92 (Linguistische Arbeitsberichte), Universität Leipzig. Pdf.

Invited Talks

09/2024. Why modeling space is hard - two case studies. Zürich.
06/2024. Why modeling space is hard. Tübingen.
12/2019. Analogical blocks in inflectional morphology. Berlin.
05/2019. Analogy-base Morphology: The Classical Nahuatl number system. Barcelona.
03/2017. Analogy in formal grammar. On the Kasem number system. Düsseldorf.
06/2016. Quantitative effects and formal models of grammar. Frankfurt.
02/2016. Quantitative effects and formal models of grammar. Paris Diderot.

Conference presentations

03/2025. Why modeling space is hard - river networks in South America (Keynote). Uncovering past with linguistic data: methodological, typological and area-specific studies. Riga, March 2025.
12/2024. Errors, mistakes and typological claims. ALT. Singapore, December 2024. [With: Marvin Martiny]
2023. Paralex: a DeAR standard for rich lexicons of inflected forms, International Symposium of Morphology. Nancy, September 2023. [With: Sacha Beniamine, Cormac Anderson, Mae Carroll, Borja Herce, Matteo Pellegrini, Erich Round, Helen Sims-Williams, Tiago Tresoldi]
2023. Analyses of the Dialectological Atlas of the Russian Language, ICHL. Heidelberg, September 2023. [With: Darja Jonic and Søren Wichman]
2023. Exploring the geographical distribution of missing data using approximate Gaussian processes, ICHL. Heidelberg, September 2023. [With: Miri Mertner]
2023. Contact and diffusion with multivariate probit models, SLE. Athens. [With: Miri Mertner and Matthias Urban]
2022. Euclide, the crow, the wolf and the pedestrian: distance methods for spatial typology, ALT. Austin, December 2022, [With: Gerhard Jäger]
2022. A typological view of analogy in morphology: some issues and possible solutions. IMM. September 2022. Website, Slides.
2022. An analogical approach to the typology of inflectional complexity. IMM. September 2022. [website], [slides]. [With Olivier Bonami]
2022. Phoneme inventory size in Polynesian languages. SLE. August 2022. [website], [slides]. [With Laura Becker and Miriam Schiele]
2021. Typological richness of the German gender system revealed by data mining. ISMo. September 2021. [website], [abstract], [slides]. [With Sebastian Fedden and Greville Corbett]
2021. Areal, family, and sociolinguistic effects on conditional constructions. SLE. September 2021. [website], [abstract], [slides]. [With Laura Becker]
2021. Typology meets data-mining: the German gender system. SLE. September 2021. Plenary talk. [website], [abstract], [slides], [video]. [With Sebastian Fedden and Greville Corbett]
2021. An analogical approach to the typology of inflectional complexity. American International Morphology Meeting. August 2021. [website], [abstract], [slides]. [With Olivier Bonami]
2021. Statistical bias control in typology. Vielfaltslinguistik. June 2021. [website], [abstract]. [With Laura Becker]
2021. Comparing derivational processes with distributional semantics. Paradigmo. June 2021. [website]. [With Olivier Bonami]
2020. Distributional assessment of derivational semantics. SLE. Online. August 2020. [pdf]. [With Olivier Bonami]
2020. Inflection class and semantic analogies. International Morphology Meeting. Vienna, January 2020. [pdf].
2019. The role of morphology in gender assignment in French. ISMO. Paris, November 2019. [With Olivier Bonami and Delphine Tribout] [pdf].
2019. Word-order correlations revisited: gradient instead of canonical orders. 13th Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology, Pavia, September 2019. [with Laura Becker]
2019. Analogy-based Morphology in HPSG: The Kasem number system. 26 International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Bucharest, July 2019.
2018. Quantitative word order typology with UD. Treebanks and Linguistic Theory. Oslo, December 2018. [with Laura Becker] [pdf].
2018. Word order correlations from a quantitative perspective. Grammar and Corpora. Paris, November 2018. [with Laura Becker] [pdf].
2018. Proportional analogies in typed systems. EW-HPSG. Frankfurt, June 2018 [pdf].
2018. Proportional analogies in typed systems . International Morphology Meeting. Budapest, May 2018. [pdf].
2017. Gender mismatches with NP ellipsis in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian . Resolving Conflicts Across Borders Conference / SinFonIJA 10. Dubrovnik, October 2017. [with Zorica Puškar and Andrew Murphy]
2017. Testing the Form-Frequency Hypothesis in case systems. SLE. Zürich, September 2017. [With Laura Becker] [pdf].
2017. Quantitative methods in African linguistics - Predicting plurals in Hausa. ACAL. April 2017. [With Laura Becker] [pdf].
2017. Coding Asymmetries, frequency and predictability: The case of to vs from. DGFS. Saarbrücken, March 2017. [With Laura Becker]
2016. The structure of hybrid nouns in Serbian: Evidence from mismatches under NP ellipsis. FDSL, December 2016. [With Zorica Puškar and Andrew Murphy]
2016. Overabundance as hybrid inflection. Quantitative evidence from Czech. Grammar and Corpora. IDS, Mannheim November 2016. [With Olivier Bonamie] [pdf].
2016. Psych predicates from a cross-linguistic perspective. Olinco. Olomouc - 11th June 2016. [With Laura Becker]
2016. Comparing Naive Discriminative Learning, Sublexicon Phonotactics, and Analogical Learning. Olinco. Olomouc - 11th June 2016.
2016. Clicks in interaction from a cross-linguistic perspective: A construction-based approach. Console XXIV. York - 8th January 2016. [with Ludger Paschen]
2015. Quantitative Evidence, Collostructional Analysis and Lexical Approaches to Argument Structure. Treebanks & Linguistic Theories 14 - 11-12th December 2015.
2015. Unifying everything: Integrating quantitative effects into formal models of grammar. European HPSG workshop - 16-17th November 2015.
2015. Unifying everything: Integrating quantitative effects into formal models of grammar. QITL 6 - 6 November 2015.
2015. Probing the naturalness bias in learning stress - A cross-linguistic study. ConSOLE XXIII; 01/2015. [With Joanna Zaleska]
2014. Naturalness bias in palatalization: an experimental study. Palatalization Conference, Tromso; 12/2014. [With Joanna Zaleska; Article]
2014. No need for rules in the -ez/-eza Spanish nominalization. PALC, Łódź, Poland; 11/2014.
2014. The -se/-ra alternation in Spanish imperfect subjunctive. CSDL 2014, Santa Barbara; 06/2014.
2013. Quantitative Analysis of the Unaccusative-Pronominal Alternation. Quantitative approaches in corpus linguistics and psycholinguistics: Word order and constituent order, Paris, France; 10/2013.

Phd Supervision

I-Ying Lin - ongoing
Marvin Martiny - ongoing

BA Supervision

Jana May - 2022 - A syntactic typological classification of Balkan Languages - Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

Teaching

2023 - Introduction to Bayesina statistics
2021-2022 - Introduction to linguistic fundamentals - Univeristy of Tübingen
2021-2022 - Areal typology and contact - Univeristy of Tübingen
2021 - Word and Paradigm Morphology - Univeristy of Tübingen
2021 - Advanced morphology - Université de Paris
2020 - Advanced morphology - Université de Paris
2018-2019 - Introduction to HPSG - Univeristy of Düsseldorf
2017 - Introduction to corpus linguistics and treebanking - Univeristy of Leipzig