I am a linguist interested in how languages change as a result of how they are used.
Our utterances are highly formulaic and highly creative at the same time. We routinely stretch and re-purpose familiar words and phrases to make something new. My research examines the organization and extension of patterns in spoken languages (mostly English) and in sign languages (mostly ASL). I'm also interested in the science of teaching and learning, as it relates to teaching linguistics.
Click this link to see a list of my publications.
May 2025
Way back in 2016 I wrote a short introduction to ASL for (non-signing) linguists. I finally got around to posting it online, you can find it here: an ASL profile
May 2025
Thrilled that my article about ASL idioms has been published in Cognitive Linguistics! This paper stemmed from lecture materials for my cognitive linguistics classes.
March 2025
Looking forward to the LSA institute at the University of Oregon this July! I'll be co-teaching The Linguistics of Sign Languages with Corrine Occhino.
My primary research interest is language description using cross-linguistically transparent terminology. In other words, I am interested in how languages work, and I like it when linguists can define our terms clearly.
The language that I work with the most is ASL. Despite decades of research on ASL, linguists actually know very little about ASL as it is used. This is for a few reasons, two of them are that 1) many terms and examples have been uncritically recycled since 1970s, and 2) much of the research that has been done has been through a specific psychological/developmental frame.
I adopt a usage-based, construction grammar approach. Construction grammar defines linguistic knowledge in terms of constructions as conventional function-form pairings of varying sizes, and usage-based linguistics highlights the relative frequency of occurrence for constructions as they are experienced in actual use.
In my recent single-authored work, I have sought to describe initialized signs, compounds, and idioms in ASL as constructions (Lepic 2021, 2023, 2025, respectively). In my recent co-authored work, I have helped to define an empirical base for analyzing ASL in actual use (Hou, Lepic, Wilkinson 2020; Hochgesang, Lepic, and Shaw 2023).
Earlier in my career, I was most interested in defining the advantages of a usage-based, construction grammar approach relative to other, structuralist approaches (Lepic 2016, Lepic and Occhino 2018; Lepic 2019; Wilkinson, Lepic, and Hou 2023), and in understanding the theoretical problem of iconicity in linguistics (Lepic, Börstell, Belsitzman, and Sandler 2016; Lepic and Padden 2017).
Lepic, Ryan. (2025). Idioms and other constructions in American Sign Language. Cognitive Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2023-0026 -- Open Access!
This paper proposes a definition of idiom that can be used to identify idioms across languages. Idioms are affective constructions, they are phrasal units, and they are conventional expressions for members of a language community. This definition is used to identify idioms in ASL such as [keep.quiet hard] ‘just have to accept it’. This approach to idioms motivates an approach in which all aspects of linguistic knowledge can be represented as meaning-form pairs that vary in their complexity and schematicity.
Lepic, Ryan. (2021). From letters to families: Initialized signs in American Sign Language. In H. Boas and S. Höder (Eds.), Constructions in Contact 2: Language Change, Multilingual Practices, and Additional Language Acquisition (pp. 268-305). Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.30.09lep -- Download PDF!
This study analyzes a database of ASL initialized signs, which are formed with handshapes corresponding to English letters. Initialized signs are shown to forge 'kind-of' and 'whole-part' relationships with existing ASL signs. Initialized signs are analyzed in terms of constructional schemas, capturing properties that are shared among ASL signs and explaining productive instances of initialization (and de-initialization).