Brett Reynolds

I’m a linguist and language teacher studying how we make sense of English, especially rare patterns that sit between grammar and context. I teach at Humber Polytechnic and am an adjunct at the University of Toronto. I co-authored A Student’s Introduction to English Grammar (2nd ed., 2021) and have published in Journal of Linguistics and other top journals. My projects are preregistered, openly shared, and classroom-ready: clear questions, careful experiments, and data anyone can check or reuse. I’m here to replace folklore about English with evidence.

I'm at a teaching-focused institution that funds applied research but not theoretical work, which is why I'm here – crowdfunding lets me test questions that traditional grants won't touch.

This project tests a question I've been circling for years: when expert linguists confidently declare something "impossible", are they describing grammar or just their own intuitions? Time to find out.

September 2025