Phil Pellino is a linguist specializing in the interface of Syntax and Semantics. He completed his graduate study in the Department of Linguistics, Languages and Culture at Michigan State University under the direction of Brian Buccola where he wrote a dissertation on the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of approximative adverbials.

He is interested is how the syntactic and semantic analysis of Natural languages can inform Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence. In terms of applications, he is interested in building research tools related to information extraction and textual analysis.

From a formal research standpoint, he has worked on issues pertaining to Variable binding, Crossover phenomena, Modification and Information structure. His specialty area is Negation.

He is interesed in several different language families and is currently investigating aspects of: Russian (a Slavic language), Anishinaabemowin (an Algonquian language) and Malay (an Austronesian language).