UCLA
The Department of Linguistics
Looking back over my career as a theoretical linguist and a field linguist, I am struck by the vast theoretical progress the field has made, and the stability in the type of research questions I seem to keep pursuing.
I am a theoretical linguist, trying to figure out the design specifications that underlie human languages: I am also a fieldworker in a traditional sense, with all the usual goals and motivations. My research can best characterized as trying to formulate the abstract specifications of the (constantly evolving) general model of language structure by applying this model to very different conditions in the field.
As a fieldworker, I enjoy working on (un(der)described) languages from the ground up, and collaborating with native speaker linguists on their languages. As a theoretical linguist, I approach this preferably without prior knowledge of the literature or the language, guided by the strongest theoretical hypotheses possible (at any given point in time) and trying to pursue a child’s perspective as principled and rigorously as possible.
What exactly can (or must) be learned from the overt sound signal and general meaning about the hierarchical structure that underlies it? Since the 90ies I approached this question with the working hypothesis that the interfaces of syntax and morphology with the sound and interpretative systems are direct. This is simply the null (and strongest) hypothesis. While this goes against the traditional or currently received wisdom, that is just because we don’t have the right syntactic theory yet! This hypothesis forces one to keep pursuing syntactic theory, with comparative syntax and semantics playing an ever more important role in deciding between different approaches and implementations.
Richard Kayne’s The Antisymmetry of Syntax 1994 started a new era in formal syntactic theory, and has had a profound impact on my work. His LCA (Linear Correspondence Axiom), which states that linear order reflects hierarchical c-command (asymmetric c-command) is an extremely powerful and simple principle, which forces a direct interface with morpheme order/phonology in its most direct interpretation. The step to antisymmetry was obvious to me: Remnant movement derivations were already an integral part of my research on the heavy pied-piping languages of Africa and Austronesia, and so was the strongly decompositional nature of syntactic structures and the search for universal hierarchies (i.e. “cartography” Guglielmo Cinque and Luigi Rizzi). Antisymmetry yields great results for the languages I work on; it yields new and important insights in the structure of SOV languages, brings the fundamental left right asymmetry of human languages to the fore (starting with Cinque 2005), and allows one to ask new and exciting questions. It reduces syntax to E- and I-merge, and can be put into : what is not to like?
One of the most surprising discoveries come from Kayne’s papers exploring the constituency of complementizers, functional adpositions (of-insertion), PP scrambling, P stranding, etc. Phrase structure rules are in fact not the starting point of derivations, but rather the output of syntactic derivations, derived from “scattered” (E-merged) pieces in the hierarchy and I-Merge.
Antisymmetry also opened up a completely new line of research on typology. ICinque’s (2006) modeling of Greenberg’s Universal 20 for example, allows to empirically investigate if there is a single computational engine underlying all syntax and morphology; whether there are fixed universal hierarchies (cartography) (and what can vary) underlying all human languages, with size of moved constituents responsible for differences and variation in linear orders. I assume furthermore that a strong principle of locality (Merge under sisterhood) governs all co-occurrence relations, not just selection, but also agreement. In as far it is successful, it provides a path for language acquisition and understanding variation, which can be implemented in a Stabler type Minimalist Grammars.
My current research interests are defined by the interplay between the development of the SSWL/TerraLing database that I direct and my own research which now has shifted towards trying to find ways to test predictions that different syntactic models make about the variation found in human languages. (For a direct link click here )
Malagasy, Javanese, Samoan, Tongan
Haitian, Sranan, Saramaccan.
The SSWL database is one of the datasets in terraling. Other datasets include Conjunction and Disjunction (project pages can be found here and here), Anaphora, and Cinque’s Universal 20 database.
If you are interested in joining the community, please sign up for our terraling google group at terraling@lists.ucla.edu. This site is used to send out letters to the community with updates of recent developments.
We also have monthly community meetings on zoom during the year (email me if you are interested in participating), and a Discord channel for discussion (email me for an invitation to Discord!).
Together with Cristina Guardiano we have started developing property definitions for existential constructions, where ultimately we are interested in the form and distribution of (non modified) indefinite subjects (and variation in existential constructions), and how this compares to definite subjects.
The following documents are linked from within the database.
If you are interested in the question how to go about developing a coding schema for Terraling/SSWL, read the following document about negative existentials.
For handouts on some Research results please contact me (or here.)
Dates: 21–23 October 2021, 9–12 PT / 12–15 ET / 18–21 CET
The 2021 TerraLing Workshop was a venue for work-in-progress that uses the TerraLing platform for crosslinguistic research, as well as projects that will use TerraLing but are still in the planning stages. The workshop took place online. Everyone who is interested in getting involved in collaborative, crosslinguistic work using TerraLing or is curious about doing so, was invited to join.
The workshop was divided into three thematic sessions, corresponding to different groups of people working on different projects using the TerraLing platform:
The thematic sessions were a combination of short presentations of ongoing TerraLing projects and preliminary results, discussions of questionnaires for TerraLing that are still under development, and invited talks by researchers who are not currently involved in the TerraLing project, but have done crucial crosslinguistic work on the respective topic.
Dates: 18-19 September 2020. 9–12 PT / 12–15 ET / 18–21 CET
This workshop aimed to get researchers interested in the Terraling database, to familiarize them with the technology (so that they can carry out their own projects), and to pave the road for future projects making use of the database, thus also supporting further international community building.
The Terraling database (http://terraling.com/) is a collaborative research tool for theoretically guided cross-linguistic research: It is an open-access, open-ended database where linguists can both pose data questions to others and answer such questions for their native languages.
The workshop involved introductions to different aspects of the database, a `hands-on trial session for participants, short presentations of projects that have been carried out via the database and a discussion (including all participants) of potential future research projects building on the database. (See below for the full program.)
Program (all times are given in Central European Summer Time, which will mean, e.g., -6 hours for New York City/East Coast, -9 hours for Los Angeles/West Coast …)
September 18
6 pm – 6.20 pm: Introduction to the database (Hilda Koopman, UCLA)
6.20 pm – 6.40 pm: A guided tour through the database (Nina Haslinger, University of Göttingen)
6.40 pm – 7.10 pm: Try-out session (all participants, using break-out rooms)
7.10 pm – 7.30 pm: Discussion (all participants)
7.30 pm – 7.40 pm: Break
7.40 pm – 8.25 pm: Terraling and fieldwork (Ryan Bochnak, UBC)
8.25 pm – 9 pm: Networking discussion (all participants)
September 19
6 pm-6.30 pm: Project presentation: SSWL (Cristina Guardiano, Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia & Hilda Koopman, UCLA)
6.30 pm-7 pm: Project presentation: Conjunction and disjunction (Nina Haslinger, University of Göttingen & Viola Schmitt, University of Graz)
7 pm-7.30 pm: Project presentation: Universal 20 (Guglielmo Cinque, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice)
7.30 pm – 7.40 pm: Break
7.40 pm – 8.30 pm: Property development and property writing
(includes a session on syntax, a session on semantics and a Q & A session, will involve all participants)
8.30 pm – 9 pm: Networking discussion (all participants)
The Morphology as Syntax2 (MaS2) workshop took place online on June 10-11 2022. For the program and slides/handouts/ (videos still need to be posted!) check out our webpage here:
Thanks to all participants for a very stimulating and inspiring workshop. Looking forward to the third MaS workshop to be held at UQAM!