I am a Graduate Student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Maryland, where my advisor is Maria Polinsky. After a year of a leave of absence I took to care for my little daughter, I am returning in the Fall semester of 2025 to defend my thesis.

I work primarily in formal syntax and I am particularly interested in Noun Phrase structure. I am currently concentrating on the syntax of small nominals, especially in locative phrases. Fieldwork is my second nature (actually, my first nature). Since my first year of undergraduate studies, I have been working with Finno-Ugric languages, primarily Moksha and Hill Mari, but also Izhma Komi, Khanty, Hungarian and Beserman. Lately, I started studying Kaqchikel and K'iche', Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala.

I received my Bachelor’s and Master's Degrees at the department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. My advisors there were Svetlana Toldova and Ekaterina Lyutikova. My BA thesis was about Morphosyntax of noun phrase in Moksha and Hill Mari, and my MA thesis was an elaboration of this study: Morphosyntax of noun phrase in Finno-Ugric languages of the Volga Region. These are written in Russian, and I am now working on the development of these ideas in English-language publications. This is my qualifying paper on the status of inherent case based on Moksha data, which I recently wrote to advance to candidacy.

Here, you can see my CV.

My legal name is Neumann now, but I would like to stay Pleshak for the linguistic community.