Deepak Alok is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. His research interest is Generative Syntax and its interfaces with Semantics and Pragmatics. Deepak is also interested in applying formal linguistics knowledge to Natural language processing. Specific topics that he is interested in are Allocutivity/Honorification in the verbal and nominal domain, Indexical Shift, Discourse particles, Split constructions, Bare nominals, classifiers and number markings, and Corpus and Universal dependency. Deepak received his PhD from Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA. His PhD work has contributed to our understanding of ‘speaker’ and ‘addressee’ in the grammar of natural language.
Contact Information
Office: MS620 (5th floor), MS Building
Email: alokdeepak[at]iitd[dot]ac[dot]in
Phone: 01126591433
Postal address
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110 016
India
Research Areas
Broad: Generative Syntax and its interfaces with Semantics and Pragmatics, Natural
language processing.
Narrow: Speaker and addressee in the grammar of natural language, Honorification/allocutivity
in the verbal and nominal domain, Indexical Shift, Discourse particles, Split constructions,
Bare nominals, Classifiers and number marking, and Corpus and Universal dependency.
Academic Background
PhD, 2020, Rutgers University, USA
MPhil, 2012, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
MA , 2010, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India
BA, 2008, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi
Employment History
Senior Linguist, 1st Nov 2020 - 10th July 2023, Panlingua Language Processing LLP, New Delhi
Publications
Peer-reviewed journal articles
Forthcoming, jointly with Ojaswee Bhalla, Allocutivity and the Syntax of Honorifics. Annual Review of Linguistics. Volume 12.
Deepak Alok & Bill Haddican. 2022. The formal heterogeneity of allocutivity.
Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 7(1). pp.1-41. DOI:https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.7670
Deepak Alok & Mark Baker. 2022. Person and honori cation: Features and
interactions in Magahi. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 7(1). pp.1-35.DOI:
https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.7675
Deepak Alok. 2021. Morphosyntax of Magahi Addressee Agreement. Syntax, 24(3).
pp.263-296. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/synt.12213
Deepak Alok. 2020. Asymmetry in splitting of subject and object in Hindi and
Magahi. Indian Linguistics 81(3-4). pp. 53-75.
Deepak Alok. 2014. The morpho-syntax of Nominal Particle -wa. Indian Linguis-
tics, 75(3-4). pp. 39-44. ISSN: 0378-0759.
Deepak Alok. 2014. Magahi Nominal Particle -wa. Indian Linguistics, 75 (1-2).
pp. 69- 74, ISSN: 0378-0759.
Chapters
Troy Messick & Deepak Alok. 2021. Stripping in Hindi: Does clause size matter?
In Sabine Laszakovits Zheng Shen (eds.), The size of things I: Structure building,
247-263. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo. 5524296.
Deepak Alok, Atul Kr. Ojha & Sriniket Kr. Mishra. 2019. A corpus-based study
of semantics of bare nominals in Magahi and Bhojpuri: The case of article-less
languages. In Shailendra Kumar and Shweta Sinha (ed.), Linguistic Ecology of
Bihar, 116-127, Lincom GMBH. ISBN 3862889831, 9783862889839
Veneeta Dayal & Deepak Alok. 2017. Scope Marking at the Syntax-Semantics
Interface. Oxford Research Encyclopedia. Published online: https://doi.org/10.
1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.133
Proceedings
2025, jointly with Ojaswee Bhalla, The Hindi Discourse particle ji:, Honorificity and the Form-Meaning Interaction. In Arum Kang (eds.), proceedings of the 27th Seoul International Conference on Generative Grammar, pp. 21-30. https://drive.google.com/file/d/150SFON99WpWWJpNKAZCXi6neipdleAQ8/view?p....
2025, jointly with Ojaswee Bhalla, Revisiting Honorification in Hindi and the Discourse Particle ji. In proceedings of the 15th Formal Approaches to South Asian Languages (FASAL-15).
2024, jointly with Sourabrata Mukherjee, Atul Kr Ojha, Akanksha Bansal, Deepak Alok, John P McCrae, Ondřej Dušek, Multilingual text style transfer: Datasets & models for Indian languages, arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.20805
2022, jointly with Pritha Majumdar, Deepak Alok, Akanksha Bansal, Atul Kr Ojha, John Philip McCrae, Bengali and Magahi PUD treebank and Parser. Proceedings of the WILDRE-6 Workshop within the 13th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference
2021, The Syntax of Magahi Addressee Agreement. In Deepak Alok and Sreekar Raghotham (eds.), proceedings of the 9th Formal Approaches to South Asian Languages (FASAL-9).pp. 1-13. Online: https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/ jsal/index.php/fasal/issue/view/26
2021, Jointly with Mohit Raj, Shyam Ratan, Ritesh Kumar, & Atul Kr. Ojha. Developing Universal Dependencies Treebanks for Magahi and Braj. Proceedings of the Workshop on Parsing and its Applications for Indian Languages (PAIL-2021). pp 10-14.
2020, Jointly with Akanksha Bansal, Atul Kr. Ojha, Bornini Lihiri, Ritesh Kumar, KMI-Panlingua-IITKGP @SIGTYP2020: Exploring Rules and Hybrid Systems for Automatic Prediction of Typological Featuresn the Proceedings of the Second Work- shop on Computational Research in Linguistic Typology (under the EMNLP 2020, November 16-20, 2020 ) by ACL.
Conferences
2025, jointly with Ojaswee Bhalla, The Hindi Discourse particle ji:, Honorificity and the Form-Meaning Interaction. The 27th Seoul International Conference on Generative Grammar, Sogang University, Seoul, Korea.
2025, jointly with Ojaswee Bhalla, Re-visiting honorification in Hindi and the discourse particle ji, Formal Approaches to South Asian Languages (FASAL)-15, The University of Texas, Austin (USA)
2024, jointly with Ojaswee Bhalla, The Syntax and Semantics of Honorific Mismatches in Magahi, 38th South Asian Languages Analysis Roundtable (SALA), Nagaland University, Kohima Campus, 28th - 30th November
2022, Jointly with Pritha Majumdar, Akanskha Bansal, Atul Kr. Ojha and John P. McCrae. Bengali and Magahi PUD Treebank and Parser. 6th Workshop on Indian Language Data Resource and Evaluation (WILDRE-6) at LREC2022, May 22-24.Palais du Pharo, France.
2021, jointly with Mohit Raj, Shyam Ratan, Ritesh Kumar & Atul Kr. Ojha. Developing Universal Dependencies Treebanks for Magahi and Braj. Workshop on Parsing and its Applications for Indian Languages (PAIL-2021), 16-19 Dec 2021. Online.
2021, Grammar of Honori cation. Poster presented at 39th meeting of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL-39). Department of Linguistics, The University of Arizona, 8-11 April. Online.
2021, Jointly with Bill Haddican. On some parameters of allocutive marking. The 9th Cambridge Comparative Syntax conference (CamCoS 9), 19-20 January 2021.Newcastle, UK.
2021, Jointly with Mark Baker. Person and Honori cation: Features and Interactions in Magahi. The 95th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), Jan 7-10.
Online
2021, Jointly with Bill Haddican. Cross-linguistic di erences in embedded/root asymmetries in allocutive marking. The 95th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), Jan 7-10. Online.
2019, Jointly with Mark Baker, On the Syntax of Addressee Agreement and Indexical Shift in Magahi. The 93rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), Jan 3-6, Sheraton New York Times Square,New York.
2019, Morphosyntax of Magahi Addressee Agreement. FASAL-9, March 16-17, Portland, Oregon.
2019, 2nd person pronoun bound by Hr: Evidence from Magahi Addressee Agreement. Poster presented at the workshop on Person and perspective, May 3- 4. Los Angeles, CA.
2019, Jointly with Ritesh Kumar, Atul Kr. Ojha, Bornini Lahiri, Mayank Jain, Language Resources and Technology Development Efforts for some Lesser-known Indian Languages. Language Technologies for All (LT4ALL), Dec 4-, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France.
2016, Jointly with Ritesh Kumar, Atul Kr. Ojha, Bornini Lahiri. Developing Resources and Tools for some Lesser-known Languages of India. Regional ICON(regICON) 2016, December 16, IIT-BHU, Varanasi.
2016, The syntax of split: The case of Hindi and Magahi. Poster presented at FASAL-6, March 12-13, UMass Amherst.
2014, On two forms of Magahi nouns. FASAL-4, March 29-30, Rutgers University.
2013, The morpho-syntax of Nominal Particle -wa. SCONLI-7, Feb 8-10, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh.
2012, Jointly with Sriniket kumar Mishra. What do Indian Languages have: DP or NP? 18th Himalayan Languages Symposium (18th HLS), Sep 10-12, BHU, Varanasi.
2012, Magahi Spatial Postposition. SCONLI-6, Feb 17-19, BHU, Varanasi.
2011, Causative Construction in Magahi. SCONLI-3, Feb 19-20, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.
2008, Honorificity in Magahi. SCONLI-2, Feb 9-10, Delhi University, Delhi.
2006, Jointly with Anil Thakur & Ravi Prakash, Some Socio-Psycho-Linguistic Aspects of Abusive Words in Hindi-Bhojpuri. The 28th All India Conference of Linguists, BHU. Nov, 2-4.
Projects
Bare Noun Phrases in Hindi, Magahi, and Bangli. Seed Grant. IIT Delhi
Honours
2023, The Young Faculty Incentive Fellowship, IIT Delhi
2020, Special Study Award, Tarak Nath Das Foundation
2016, Mellon Summer Research Grant, Andrew Mellon Foundation
2012, Junior Research Fellowship (UGC-NET JRF), University Grants Commission (UGC), India
2010, Gold Medal (standing first in M.A.), Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, India.
2008, Certificate of Merit (standing first in B.A), Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, India.
2014-2019, Excellence Fellowship for Doctoral Study , Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA.
Teaching Areas
Generative linguisitcs