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Research
Recent Work
- (with Richard Stockwell and Anke Himmelreich) “An extraction restriction with complement-less prepositions in British English but not dialectal German.” To appear in Ermenegildo Bidese & Federica Cognola (eds.), Germanic syntax from a comparative perspective, Language Science Press.
- (with Richard Stockwell) “The puzzling nuanced status of who free relative clauses: A follow-up to Patterson and Caponigro (2015).” English Language and Linguistics 26(1), 185–202. (2022)
- “Against some approaches to long-distance agreement without AGREE.” In Bronwyn M. Bjorkman & Daniel Currie Hall (eds.), Contrast and representation in syntax, 215–246. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (2020)
- “Acceptability ratings cannot be taken at face value.” In Samuel Schindler, Anna Drożdżowicz & Karen Brøcker (eds.), Linguistic intuitions: Evidence and method, 189–214. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (2020)
- (with Richard Stockwell) “Transparent free relatives with who: Support for a unified analysis.” Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, vol. 4, 40:1–6. (2019)
- (with Richard Stockwell) “Objectless locative prepositions in British English.” Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, vol. 4, 48:1–15. (2019)
- (with Richard Stockwell) “Dialects haven’t got to be the same: Modal microvariation in English.” Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, vol. 4, 31:1–15. (2019)
Publications
Methodology
- “Data and evidence” (in press). In Hilary Nesi & Petar Milin (editors-in-chief), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 3rd edition. Elsevier.
- (with Jon Sprouse) “Grammar and the use of data” (2020). In Bas Aarts, Jill Bowie & Gergana Popova (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of English Grammar, 40–58. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- The empirical base of linguistics: Grammaticality judgments and linguistic methodology (2016). Language Science Press. New printing of my 1996 book, with a new preface and expanded indexes. Buy the book at Amazon.com or view as PDF at langsci-press.org/catalog/book/89
- (with Jon Sprouse and Diogo Almeida) “A comparison of informal and formal acceptability judgments using a random sample from Linguistic Inquiry 2001–2010” (2013). Lingua 134, 219–248.
- (with Jon Sprouse and Diogo Almeida) “Assessing the reliability of journal data in syntax: Linguistic Inquiry 2001–2010” (2011). lingbuzz
- “Linguistic evidence and grammatical theory” (2011). Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 2(2), 206–221.
- “Grammaticality judgments” (2011). In Patrick Colm Hogan (ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences, 349–350. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- “Methodology” (2011). In Patrick Colm Hogan (ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences, 497–501. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- “Web searches should supplement judgements, not supplant them” (2009). Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 28(1), 151–156.
- “Status of linguistic evidence” (2006). In Lynn Nadel (editor-in-chief), Encyclopedia of cognitive science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 2, 910–917.
- “Data and evidence” (2006). In Keith Brown (editor-in-chief), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, 2nd edition, Oxford: Elsevier, vol. 3, 356–363.
- “Thinking about what we are asking speakers to do” (2005). In Stephan Kepser & Marga Reis (eds.), Linguistic evidence: Empirical, theoretical, and computational perspectives, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 457–485. (Based on an invited talk presented at a workshop in Tübingen, 2004)
Acquisition
- (with Jon Sprouse and Ivano Caponigro) “Challenges for a theory of islands: A broader perspective on Ambridge, Pine, and Lieven” (2015). Language 91(2), e31–e39.
- “Superfluous ‘do’ and comparison of spell-outs” (2013). In Elma Blom, Ineke van de Craats & Josje Verhagen (eds.), Dummy auxiliaries in first and second language acquisition, Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 11–38.
- “The status of nonagreeing don’t and theories of root infinitives” (2010). Language Acquisition 17(4), 235–271.
- “What it means (not) to know (number) agreement” (2009). In José M. Brucart, Anna Gavarró & Jaume Solà (eds.), Merging features: Computation, interpretation, and acquisition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 80–103. (Based on an invited talk at GLOW in Barcelona in April, 2006)
- “Why nonfinite be is not omitted while finite be is” (2004). In Proceedings of the 28th Boston University Conference on Language Development, 506–521.
- “The non-omission of nonfinite be” (2003). Nordlyd 31(3), 606–622. (Based on a talk presented in Tromsø in January, 2002)
- “Productive inventory and case/agreement contingencies: A methodological note on Rispoli (1999)” (2001). Journal of Child Language 28(2), 507–515.
- (with Kenneth Wexler) “An elicitation study of young English children’s knowledge of tense: Semantic and syntactic properties of optional infinitives” (2000). In Proceedings of the 24th Boston University Conference on Language Development, 669–683.
- (with Kenneth Wexler and Mabel Rice) “Subject case in children with SLI and unaffected controls: Evidence for the Agr/Tense omission model” (1997). Language Acquisition 7, 317–344.
- (with Kenneth Wexler) “Subject case licensing and English root infinitives” (1996). In Proceedings of the 20th Boston University Conference on Language Development, 670–681. [Note: Everything in this paper is superseded by the discussion in my dissertation (see below).]
- Review of Aspects of Argument Structure Acquisition in Inuktitut by Shanley E.M. Allen (1997). Canadian Journal of Linguistics 42(4), 492–495.
- “Morphosyntax and syntax” (2004). In Raymond D. Kent (ed.), The MIT encyclopedia of communication disorders, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 354–358.
Processing
- (with Inés Antón-Méndez, Mary K. Champion and Tamar H. Gollan) “What the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) says about homophone frequency inheritance” (2012). Memory & Cognition 40(5), 802–811.
- (with Victor S. Ferreira) (eds.) (2007). The state of the art in speech error research: Proceedings of the 2005 LSA Institute Workshop. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 53.
[Vic and I wrote the following contributions to this volume: “Introduction” and “What should we do with our speech error corpora? Notes from the panel discussion”.] - (with Christina Kim and Davis Anderson) “A novel approach for studying speech errors” (2006). Poster presented at the Third International Workshop on Language Production, Northwestern University, Chicago.
- (with Edward Gibson) “Disambiguation preferences in noun phrase conjunction do not mirror corpus frequency” (1999). Journal of Memory and Language 40, 263–279. (Based on a poster presented at the CUNY Conference in March, 1996)
- (with Edward Gibson) “Argumenthood and English prepositional phrase attachment” (1999). Journal of Memory and Language 40, 409–431. (Based on a talk presented at the AMLaP Conference in September, 1997)
- “Subject gaps, A-bar traces, and parallel parsing” (2005). In Reiko Okabe & Kuniko Nielsen (eds.), Papers in Psycholinguistics 2, UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics 13, 158–179.
- “PP attachment and argumenthood” (1995). In Carson T. Schütze, Jennifer B. Ganger & Kevin Broihier (eds.), Papers on language processing and acquisition, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 26, 95–152. [Some of this is superseded by material in the JML paper cited above; some of it isn’t completely right. Please consult with me before using it.]
Syntax and Morphology
- (with Craig Sailor) “Is there repair by ellipsis?” (2014) Ms.
- (with Craig Sailor) “What is an adjunct?” (2013) Ms.
- “There does not undergo predicate inversion” (2011) Snippets 24, 16–17.
- (with David Schueler) Review of Nonfinite Structures in Theory and Change by D. Gary Miller (2007). Language 83(2), 443–445.
- “Synchronic and diachronic microvariation in English do” (2004). Lingua 114(4), 495–516. (Based on a talk presented in Leuven in August, 2001)
- “When is a verb not a verb?” (2003). Nordlyd 31(2), 400–415. (Based on a talk presented in Tromsø in January, 2002)
- (with Ivano Caponigro) “Parameterizing passive participle movement” (2003). Linguistic Inquiry 34(2), 293–323. (Based on a talk presented at the LSA, 2002)
- “Syncretism and double agreement with Icelandic nominative objects” (2003). In Lars-Olof Delsing, Cecilia Falk, Gunlög Josefsson & Halldór Á. Sigurðsson (eds.), Grammar in focus: Festschrift for Christer Platzack, Lund: Department of Scandinavian Languages, vol. 2, 295–303.
- “On Korean ‘Case stacking’: The varied functions of the particles ka and lul.” (2001). The Linguistic Review 18(3), 193–232. (Based on a talk presented at NELS in 1995(!))
- “On the nature of default case” (2001). Syntax 4(3), 205–238. (Based on a talk presented in Utrecht in August, 1998)
- “Semantically empty lexical heads as last resorts” (2001). In Norbert Corver & Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), Semi-lexical categories: On the content of function words and the function of content words, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 127–187. (Expanded version of a talk presented in Tilburg in May, 1999)
- “English expletive constructions are not infected” (1999). Linguistic Inquiry 30, 467–484.
- “Serbo-Croatian second position clitic placement and the phonology-syntax interface” (1994). In Andrew Carnie, Heidi Harley & Tony Bures (eds.), Papers on phonology and morphology, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 21, 373–473. (My phonology generals paper)
- “Towards a Minimalist account of quirky case and licensing in Icelandic” (1993). In Colin Phillips (ed.), Papers on Case & Agreement II, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 19, 321–375. [NOTE: This paper was written in 1993 and has not been updated. It does not reflect my current views on Icelandic, which can be found in my dissertation (see below), especially chapter 4. It is posted here because I have continued to be asked for it, and because some of the arrows in the tree diagrams came out wrong in the published version—they are corrected here. Aside from that, plus some small shifts in the page breaks and typography, this is how the paper originally appeared.]
Dissertation
My 1997 MIT Ph.D. dissertation, “INFL in child and adult language: Agreement, case and licensing,” is distributed in hardcopy by MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. Alternatively, you can download it as a PDF file (1.4 MB). (This electronic version fixes several typos and has more complete versions of a couple of references, while preserving the original pagination.)
Please note that several sections of the dissertation have been further developed and/or superseded by subsequent work. In particular,
- much of sections 2.6 and 3.2.2 became the Syntax paper listed above;
- section 3.2.1 was incorporated into the 2001 JCL paper listed above;
- an analysis of some of the unexplained facts in section 4.1.1 is proposed in the Festschrift paper listed above;
- section 4.1.6 was refined and extended into the LI paper listed above;
- appendix 4.A evolved into the Linguistic Review article listed above;
- section 5.2.1 was partly pursued in the Nordlyd paper listed above, and in the Corver and van Riemsdijk volume cited above;
- section 5.3.1.2 was superseded by the co-authored Language Acquisition article listed above;
[Please do not use data from section 5.3.1.2.2 of the dissertation.] - sections 5.3.1.3 and 5.5.2 were pursued and reported on in Schütze and Wexler 2000 (see above).
Teaching Materials
Here are my errata and misc. comments for the three textbooks I regularly use. Feel free to help me make them more complete.
Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 7th US edition (and the accompanying Study Guide and Instructor’s Resource Manual). By W. O’Grady, J. Archibald, M. Aronoff & J. Rees-Miller (eds.). 2017, Bedford/St. Martin’s. [Updated 9/24]
Syntax: A Generative Introduction, 3rd edition (and the accompanying Workbook). By Andrew Carnie. 2013, Wiley-Blackwell. [Updated 10/21]
An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory. By Dominique Sportiche, Hilda Koopman & Edward Stabler. 2014, Wiley-Blackwell. [Updated 10/21]