Jack Ryan is a Ph.D. student with interests in historical linguistics, dialectology, and morphology.

Jack earned a B.A. in Linguistics with Honours from McGill University with a minor in Classics. His undergraduate thesis explored number and gender marking on Onondaga verbs through the lenses of formal linguistics, historical linguistics, and dialectology and proposed impoverishment rules to explain syncretism patterns. 

He holds an M.A. in linguistics from Southern Illinois University Carbondale where he was a research fellow. Drawing on Labov’s vowel shifting principles, his master’s thesis introduces a new account of exceptions to the Great Vowel Shift in Southwest Yorkshire English and an explanation to the paradox these exceptions seemingly create for the placement of Open Syllable Lengthening in the history of English.