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Timothy O’Donnell

Computational Linguistics Probabilistic Modeling Deep Learning Productivity And Persistence In Language Storage Vs. Computation Trade-off
McGill University School of Computer Science

About

Dr. Timothy John O’Donnell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at McGill University and a Core Academic Member of Mila (Quebec AI Institute). He holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in the Language of Adaptation. His research program is at the forefront of Computational Linguistics, where he uses Probabilistic Modeling and Deep Learning to understand how the human mind acquires and processes the infinite complexity of natural language. Dr. O'Donnell is internationally recognized for his work on Productivity and Persistence, exploring the "storage vs. computation" trade-off: why some linguistic structures are memorized as wholes while others are computed on the fly using rules.

Research Performance Summary

105
Total Papers
2741
Total Citations
25
H-Index
2002-2026
Active Research Span

First Recorded Paper

The NITE markup framework

Year: 2002

Citations: 6

Venue: NITE Report D 2, 2

Latest Recorded Paper

Ensembling Language Models with Sequential Monte Carlo

Year: 2026

Citations: 0

Venue: arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.05432

Last 10 Years Publication Activity

This timeline shows the professor's yearly publication activity.

2026
1
2025
15
2024
6
2023
6
2022
7
2021
6
2020
7
2019
10
2018
3
2017
8
2016
2

Publication Venues and Collaboration

Journal, Conference, and Book Publication Breakdown

Conference 34
Journal 7
Book 1

Top Coauthors

O’Donnell O'Donnell

Research Impact by Period

2025-2026

Period Stats
Papers 16
Citations 117
Avg. Citations / Paper 7.3
H-Index 6

2020-2024

Period Stats
Papers 32
Citations 450
Avg. Citations / Paper 14.1
H-Index 11

2015-2019

Period Stats
Papers 32
Citations 1509
Avg. Citations / Paper 47.2
H-Index 13

2010-2014

Period Stats
Papers 14
Citations 357
Avg. Citations / Paper 25.5
H-Index 7

2005-2009

Period Stats
Papers 8
Citations 206
Avg. Citations / Paper 25.8
H-Index 4

2000-2004

Period Stats
Papers 3
Citations 102
Avg. Citations / Paper 34
H-Index 3

Contact and Professional Links

Contact Information

timothy.odonnell@mcgill.ca

Detected Research Keywords

Universality Diversity Human Diversity Human Song Generalized Parsing Framework Productivity Reuse Language Grammatical Morphology Source Morphology Source Early Source Early Number Early Number Word Number Word Meanings Causes Consequences Explicit