Mil{lie/dred} Hacker

East Lansing, Michigan

hackermi (at) msu (dot) edu

I'm a 1st-year PhD student in Linguistics at Michigan State University and an RA for the MI Diaries corpus project. I study phonological variation, currently focusing on how/when/why narrative speech (spontaneous story-telling) conditions the emergence of vernacular features.

Things I've previously dabbled in include: opaque pre-nasal reduction/deletion patterns in Hixkaryana, syntactically conditioned hiatus resolution in Ojibwe, Comparative Markedness as a solution to non-neutralizing consonant gradation, the phonological representation of acronyms, features of the Danish Multiethnolect, and phonetic C-center stability.

Research

Presentations

Hacker, M. Narrative Style-Shifting in Self-Recorded Audio Diaries. Talk given at Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL 2026). 26 March 2026. [PDF]

Hacker, M. Hixkaryana Prefix Deletion is Gradual. Talk given at Penn Linguistics Conference (PLC 50). 1 March 2026. [PDF]

Hacker, M. The Gradual Deletion Hypothesis: Evidence from Nasality Agreement in Hixkaryana. Poster presented at UC Santa Cruz Linguistics Undergraduate Research Conference (LURC). 7 June 2024. [PDF]

Papers

Hacker, M. The Gradual Approach to Null Allomorphy. In prep for Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 33.1: Proceedings of PLC 50 (PWPL 33.1).

Okay but who even is this person

I'm from Northern California and attended UC Santa Cruz to study Linguistics and Environmental Studies. I like all kinds of visual arts, as well as running, hiking, biking (anything where I get to move my legs), baking, and gardening. I'm in the Spartan Housing Cooperative and serve on its board of directors (ask me about co-ops if you're interested in creating more sustainable ways of living.)

An ongoing passion project of mine is walking every road in East Lansing. I want to become meaningfully familiar with every nook and cranny of the area I inhabit. If you live in the area and like to go on little adventures, my inbox is always open. ☺

Railroad coconut