Hello! I'm Naomi. I'm the Language Learning Visiting Assistant Research Professor of Linguistics at the University of Michigan.
My research uses theoretical, computational, and behavioral methods to study language learning and processing in humans and machines.
Most recently, this research has centered on mulitlingual minds and (L)LMs with a focus on transfer effects between languages.
Before joining Michigan, I was a postdoc with Stefan Frank at Radboud Universiteit.
In 2023, I earned my PhD in Computational Linguistics at the University of Washington, where I was advised by Shane Steinert-Threlkeld.
I collaborate frequently with Arto Anttila and have also worked with Naja Ferjan Ramírez and the late Akira Omaki.
Prior to my PhD, I received a master's in Symbolic Systems at Stanford University and a bachelor's in Linguistics and Communication at the University of Washington.
Email:
Papers
Stefan L. Frank and
Naomi Tachikawa Shapiro. In press. Connectionist models of second language acquisition and processing. In Hilary Nesi, Petar Milin, and Brent Wolter (eds.),
International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (3rd Edition).
Naomi Tachikawa Shapiro, Andrew A. Hedding, and Shane Steinert-Threlkeld. 2024. Iconic artificial language learning in the field: An experiment with San Martín Peras Mixtec speakers.
Proceedings of the 46th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 3686–3692.
Naomi Tachikawa Shapiro and Shane Steinert-Threlkeld. 2023. Iconic artificial language learning: A conceptual replication with English speakers.
Proceedings of the 45th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 146–152.
Naomi Tachikawa Shapiro, Amandalynne Paullada, and Shane Steinert-Threlkeld. 2021. A multilabel approach to morphosyntactic probing.
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2021, 4486–4524.
Naomi Tachikawa Shapiro, Daniel S. Hippe, and Naja Ferjan Ramírez. 2021. How chatty are daddies? An exploratory study of infants' language environments.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 64(8), 3242–3252.
Naomi Tachikawa Shapiro and Arto Anttila. 2021. On the phonology and semantics of deaccentuation.
Proceedings of the 2020 Annual Meeting on Phonology (AMP).
Naja Ferjan Ramírez, Daniel S. Hippe, and
Naomi Tachikawa Shapiro. 2021. Exposure to electronic media between 6 and 24 months of age: An exploratory study.
Infant Behavior and Development, 63, 101549.
Arto Anttila, Tim Dozat, Daniel Galbraith, and
Naomi Tachikawa Shapiro. 2020. Sentence stress in presidential speeches. In G. Kentner and J. Kremers (Eds.),
Prosody in Syntactic Encoding (pp. 17–50). De Gruyter.
Arto Anttila and
Naomi Tachikawa Shapiro. 2017. The interaction of stress and syllabification: Parallel or serial?
Proceedings of the 34th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL), 52–61.
Naomi Tachikawa Shapiro. 2016. Splitting compounds with ngrams.
Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING), 630–640.
Teaching
University of Michigan
Instructor, LING/COGSCI 321 Alien Anatomy: How ChatGPT Works (upcoming: Winter 2026)
Instructor, LING 345 The Linguistics of Speech Recognition (Autumn 2025)
University of Washington
Lead Teaching Assistant, Department of Linguistics (2021–2022 Academic Year)
Instructor, LING/CSE 472 Introduction to Computational Linguistics (Spring 2021)
Teaching Assistant, LING 200 Introduction to Linguistic Thought (Spring 2018, Spring 2020)
Instructor, Summer Immersion Program in Redmond, WA (Summer 2019)
Stanford University
Teaching Assistant, SYMSYS 100 Minds and Machines (Autumn 2015)
CV
CV.pdf
— Updated November 2025