Publications - Brett Reynolds

Books

Reynolds, B. (completed manuscript). Words That Won't Hold Still: How Linguistic Categories Work. Under review.
Reynolds, B. (2026). Language Landscapes: The ESL teacher's guide to how English works. Textbooks in Language Sciences 19. Berlin: Language Science Press. Book page & resources · Catalog · DOI
Jespersen, O. (2025). Negation in English and Other Languages. New edition co-edited with Peter Evans. Berlin: Language Science Press. Publisher
Huddleston, R., Pullum, G. K., & Reynolds, B. (2022). A Student's Introduction to English Grammar (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. Publisher · Errata

Journal Articles

Pullum, G. & Reynolds, B. (forthcoming). Misused linguistic evidence in a study of media bias. Discourse & Communication. DOI LingBuzz
Reynolds, B. (forthcoming). An attentional-bias account of language emergence. Evolutionary Linguistic Theory. LingBuzz
Reynolds, B. (2026). The lexicon–syntax boundary in English numerals: Cardinals, ordinals, and fractionals. English Language and Linguistics, 1–19. DOI
Reynolds, B. (2025). Going + comp projects PP, not AdvP: A reply to Silvennoinen (2025). English Language and Linguistics. DOI
Reynolds, B. (2025). Prepositions in (English) dictionaries. Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America, 46(1). Publisher
Reynolds, B. (2024). Language without lessons: The promise of large language models. Contact. PDF
Reynolds, B. (2024). Why more and less are never adverbs. Journal of Linguistics. DOI Preprint
Reynolds, B. (2022). Still against teaching collocations. The Reading Matrix, 22(1), 144–149. PDF
Reynolds, B. (2021). Quantifying the differences between lexical categories: The case of pronouns and determinatives in English. Cadernos de Linguística. Publisher
Reynolds, B. (2019). Against teaching collocations. ELT Journal, 73(2), 223–225. DOI
Reynolds, B. (2014). Determinatives again. TESL Canada Journal, 31(2), 89–91. PDF
Reynolds, B. (2013). Determiners, feline marsupials, and the category–function distinction: A critique of ELT grammars. TESL Canada Journal, 30(2), 1–17. PDF
Choi, J., Milburn, R., Marcoccia, P., Silva, P. J., Penag, S., & Reynolds, B. (2013). The intersection of mathematics and language in the post-secondary environment: Implications for English language learners. Collected Essays on Teaching and Learning, 6. Publisher
Reynolds, B. (2011). The myth of FANBOYS: Coordination, commas, and college composition classes. TESL Canada Journal, 29(1), 104–112. PDF
Reynolds, B. (2003). Problems in automating Brown's EFL readability index. JALT Journal. DOI
Reynolds, B. (1999). Phonetic coding in language aptitude: Different roles for different languages. Temple University Japan Working Papers in Applied Linguistics, 14.
Reynolds, B. (1998). Phonemic awareness: Is it really language specific? Literacy Across Cultures, 2(2), 9–13.

Preprints & Under Review

Reynolds, B. (2026). Adversarial pragmatics for AI safety evaluation: A diagnostic framework and seed benchmark for language-mediated control. arXiv preprint. arXiv Mirror Markdown Interactive intro Adjudication app Source
Reynolds, B. (2026). Beyond concordance: External validation of probabilistic grammar in the English dative alternation. Preprint. LingBuzz Mirror Markdown Source
Reynolds, B. (2026). Bridge principles without UG: Projectibility, crosslinguistic evidence, and linguistic ontology. LingBuzz Mirror Markdown Source
Reynolds, B. (2026). De-idealizing the asterisk: Grammaticality as conditioned stability. LingBuzz
Reynolds, B. (2026). Difference-in-differences for corpus linguistics: Causal inference, corpus composition, and linguistic change after shocks. Preprint. LingBuzz Mirror Markdown
Reynolds, B. (2026). Effective without warrant: Causal-normative networks and the social life of status. Under review. PhilArchive Mirror Markdown
Reynolds, B. (2026). English determinatives as nouns. Under review. LingBuzz Mirror Markdown
Reynolds, B. (2026). Expert grammaticality judges as evaluators, not participants: Grammaticality Judgments, Rater Roles, and Research Ethics Review. LingBuzz PhilArchive Mirror Markdown
Reynolds, B. (2026). Function-first without function-in-syntax: Projectibility, field-relative kinds, and the limits of Thomasson’s deflation. PhilArchive Source
Reynolds, B. & Miller, J. T. M. (2026). Grammaticality as kind: Ontology, epistemology, and empirical pay-off. Under review. LingBuzz PhilArchive
Reynolds, B. (2026). Grammaticality de-idealized. LingBuzz Source
Reynolds, B. (2026). Grammaticality needs more than dependency locality. Under review. LingBuzz
Reynolds, B. (2026). Grounding without corrective control: Truth-tracking profiles for large language models. Under review at Synthese. PhilArchive Mirror Markdown
Reynolds, B. (2026). Interjection as a lexical category: What membership lets us predict. LingBuzz Mirror Markdown
Reynolds, B. (2026). Kinds as projectibility profiles: Support grades and demotion rules. PhilArchive
Reynolds, B. (2026). LLMs as boundary phenomena: A comment on Nefdt (2026). PhilArchive Mirror Markdown
Reynolds, B. (2026). Mean bounds, structural reductions, and exhaustive verification for tree independence polynomial unimodality. Zenodo Interactive companion Code
Reynolds, B. (2026). A metaphysician’s systemic-functional turn: Amie Thomasson’s Rethinking Metaphysics and the architecture of linguistic description. LingBuzz PhilArchive Source
Reynolds, B. (2026). Not every stable cluster is homeostatic: Stability, network order, maintenance, and control in projectible kinds. Preprint. PhilArchive Mirror Markdown
Reynolds, B. (2026). Projectibility: A history and a diagnostic framework. Preprint. PhilSci-Archive
Reynolds, B. (2026). Reference as a cluster concept: A reply to Coelho Mollo and Millière. Preprint. PhilArchive Mirror Markdown
Reynolds, B. (2026). A variance-scaled Turán inequality at the first descent of a Poisson–binomial mass function. Manuscript. PDF Interactive companion Code & certificates
Reynolds, B. (2026). Varieties as conditioning structure: A homeostatic account of register, dialect, and discourse community. LingBuzz Mirror Markdown
Reynolds, B. (2026). What do we mean by language? A pluralist map for the language sciences. Under review. LingBuzz PhilArchive Mirror Markdown
Reynolds, B. (2026). What dogs know about trails: Metaphor, mechanisms, and the phylogeny of cross-domain extension. PsyArXiv
Reynolds, B. (2026). When benchmark inferences do not compose: Projectibility in AI evaluation. arXiv preprint. arXiv Source
Reynolds, B. (2026). Why clause structure is judged like tense and agreement: public-update operators and grammaticality. Preprint. LingBuzz Mirror Markdown
Reynolds, B. (2026). Why English doesn't extract left branches (yet). LingBuzz
Reynolds, B. (2025). Definiteness and deitality in English: A projectibility-first account. Under review. LingBuzz Mirror Markdown
Reynolds, B. (2025). English kinship terms: From taboo to syntax. Under review. LingBuzz
Reynolds, B. (2025). "Exactly who" but not *"the person exactly who": Focus modifiers and the foregrounding constraint. LingBuzz
Reynolds, B. (2025). The homeostatic maintenance of English countability: Bidirectional inference and the stability of grammatical clusters. Under review. LingBuzz Mirror Markdown
Reynolds, B. (2025). A hyperreal model of sorites tolerance. PhilPapers
Reynolds, B. (2025). Language as a stack of homeostatic property-cluster kinds: From phonemes to constructions. Zenodo LingBuzz Mirror Markdown
Reynolds, B. (2025). Measuring stable diagnostic ambiguity: A quantitative workflow for small-n grammatical boundary phenomena. Under review. LingBuzz Mirror Markdown Code Slides
Reynolds, B. (2025). Naturalizing typological kinds: Comparanda, mechanisms, and measurement. LingBuzz Mirror Markdown
Reynolds, B. (2025). Personhood and pro-forms: A hierarchical analysis of gender in Modern English. Under review.
Reynolds, B. (2024). Characterizing grammaticality: A draft framework. LingBuzz
Reynolds, B. (2024). Not every whose down in Who-ville likes appearing a lot: Pragmatic constraints on independent relative whose. LingBuzz
Reynolds, B. (2021). Full matrix of English determinative and pronoun features. LingBuzz
Reynolds, B. (2020). What echolocation does and doesn't mean for language. OSF

Conference Proceedings & Technical Reports

Arora, A., Schneider, N., & Reynolds, B. (2023). CGELBank annotation manual v1.2. arXiv
Arora, A., Schneider, N., & Reynolds, B. (2023). Unified syntactic annotation of English in the CGEL framework. Proceedings of the 17th Linguistic Annotation Workshop. ACL Anthology
Arora, A., Schneider, N., & Reynolds, B. (2022). CGELBank: CGEL as a framework for English syntax annotation. arXiv
Lemmer, R., Brierley, M., Reynolds, B., & Waring, R. (2012). Introduction to the Extensive Reading Foundation Online Self-Placement Test. Extensive Reading World Congress Proceedings, 1, 23–25. PDF
Reynolds, B. (1999). Phonological awareness in EFL reading acquisition. In A. Barfield et al. (Eds.), On JALT98: Focus on the Classroom: Interpretations, 152–159. Tokyo: JALT.

Selected Talks

Reynolds, B. (2026). Data-driven syntax: How English works around its left-branching constraint. Keynote, JWLLP 35, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, April 18. Slides
Reynolds, B. (2026). How to study boundary phenomena: English reciprocals and the limits of categorization. Pushing the Boundaries of Linguistic Categorisation, Sorbonne, Paris, April 10. Slides
Kim, J.-B. & Reynolds, B. (2026). Transparent free relatives. WRAPP (Workshop on the Representation and Analysis of Prepositional Phrases), April 8–10, Germany. Slides
Reynolds, B. (2026). Varieties as conditioning structure. Language Variation and Change study group, University of Toronto, March 27.
Reynolds, B. (2011). Words as a measure of hope. TEDxHumberCollege: More Than Words, Toronto, June 1. Video Final missing graph

Book Chapters & Other Academic Writing

Reynolds, B., & Brown, J. (2019). Treating ESL students with respect: Critical praxis. In A. Jule (Ed.), The Compassionate Educator: Understanding Social Issues in Canadian Schools (pp. 153–173). Toronto: Canadian Scholars.
Reynolds, B. (2012). ウィキの神話を打ち破る：ウィキが、あなたが求めているラィティングの解決法になりそうもない理由 [Busting the wiki myth]. In M. Jamall (Ed.), Sound & Vision, 69–98. Tokyo: Kazama Press.
Reynolds, B. (2012). Oxford Modern English Grammar by Bas Aarts (Book review). Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching. PDF
Reynolds, B. (2010). Chunking: Another perspective. Visual Thesaurus. Archive
Reynolds, B. (2007). Teaching and Learning Vocabulary: Bringing Scientific Research to Practice (Review). TESL Canada Journal, 24(2), 137–138. PDF

Educational Materials

Reynolds, B. et al. (2022). ODELLO (Online free and open materials for CLB 1–4). eCampus Ontario. Website
Graham-Marr, A., Moran, D., McNeese, S., & Reynolds, B. (2009). Communication Spotlight: Speaking Strategies and Listening Skills: Starter. Tokyo: Abax.
Reynolds, B. (2008). Foundations Reading Library, Level 5: Lesson Planner. R. Waring & M. Jamall (Eds.). Boston: Heinle.
Reynolds, B. (2008). Foundations Reading Library, Level 7: Activity Book. R. Waring & M. Jamall (Eds.). Boston: Heinle.

Popular Writing

Reynolds, B. (2023–present). Multiple articles for Mental Floss. Author page
Reynolds, B. (2006–2014). English, Jack (blog, ~800 posts). Blog