papers
in reverse chronological order - includes published and unpublished papers, as well as some talk handouts and slides
2025
- Unpublished ms., 2025.[submitted]
2024
- Proceedings of the 39th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, pp. 382–392, 2024.
- In: Sevdali, Christina and Mertyris, Dionysios and Anagnostopoulou, Elena (eds.), The Place of Case in Grammar, pp. 359–387, 2024.
- Unpublished ms., 2024.[talk presented at an Oxford workshop on LLMs and Linguistics, and to the Romanian Academy of Sciences; this is the Bucharest version, hence the Romanian content]
2023
- Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 8(1), 2023.
2021
- In: Laszakovits, Sabine and Shen, Zheng (eds.), The Size of Things I: Structure Building, pp. 187–224, 2021.
- Unpublished ms., 2021.[to be revised into a monograph with a bit of a different theory by the end of 2026. For a preview, see these handouts from CreteLing 2023]
2017
- In: Everaert, Martin and van Riemsdijk, Henk (eds.), A Companion to Syntax, 2017.
2015
- Unpublished ms., 2015.[talk presented at Yale, University of Illinois Chicago Circle, and University of Brasília, but never written up]
2014
- Language, 90(2), pp. 515–528, 2014.[a reply to this paper]
2013
- In: Cheng, Lisa L. L. and Corver, Norbert (eds.), Diagnostics for Movement, pp. 123–157, 2013.
- Unpublished ms., 2013.[presented on January 4, 2013 at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in Boston]
2011
- , 2011.[accepted with revision by Language, foolishly not resubmitted]
- Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 19(2), pp. 165–174, 2011.
- Unpublished ms., 2011.[invited 2011 talk at Japanese-Korean Conference at Seoul National University, also invited talk at NELS]
2009
- In: Iatridou, S. (ed.), MIT Working Papers in Linguistics: Proceedings of the Workshop on Greek Syntax, 2009.
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- Зонды, цели и синтаксические категорииIn: Tatevosov, Sergei (ed.), Investigations into Formal Altaic Linguistics: Proceedings of WAFL3, pp. 14–49, 2009.[Longer version of “Probes, Goals and Syntactic Categories”, in Russian]
- In: Boeckx, C. (ed.), Handbook of Linguistic Minimalism, 2009.
- Language, 85(3), pp. 671–681, 2009.
- Brain and Behavioral Sciences, 32(5), pp. 464–465, 2009.[Invited commentary on a paper by Evans and Levinson; see p. 39 of the pdf]
2007
- In: Karimi, S. and Samiian, V. and Wilkins, W. (eds.), Phrasal and Clausal Architecture, 2007.
- Theoretical Linguistics, 33(1), pp. 105–120, 2007.[a reply to this paper]
2006
- Proceedings of the 7th Annual Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics, 2006.
2005
- Theoretical Linguistics, 31(1–2), pp. 1–46, 2005.
- Theoretical Linguistics, 31(1–2), pp. 235–262, 2005.
2004
- In: Guéron, J. and Lecarme, J. (eds.), The Syntax of Time, pp. 495–538, 2004.
2003
- In: Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 2003.
2002
- Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2(2), 2002.
- Scientific American, 2002.
2001
- Linguistic Inquiry, pp. 1–44, 2001.
- In: Kenstowicz, M. (ed.), Ken Hale: A Life in Language, pp. 355–426, 2001.
2000
- In: MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, 2000.
- Unpublished ms., 2000.[though just a handout, this was my most substantial comment on the Whole Language vs. Linguistic debacle, in which the Suzuki violin method (of all things) plays a role]
1998
- Introduction: Optimality in SyntaxIn: Barbosa, P. and Fox, D. and Hagstrom, P. and McGinnis, M. and Pesetsky, D. (eds.), Is the Best Good Enough, pp. 1–14, 1998.
- In: Barbosa, P. and Fox, D. and Hagstrom, P. and McGinnis, M. and Pesetsky, D. (eds.), Is the Best Good Enough, 1998.
1997
- Science, 276, pp. 1177a–1178a, 1997.
- In: Archangeli, D. and Langendoen, T. (eds.), Optimality Theory: An Overview, pp. 134–169, 1997.
- , 1997.[report for a 1997 workshop on reading and literacy by the American Society of Newspaper Editors - commentary on “Whole Language” reading instruction]
1996
- MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 26, pp. 153–191, 1996.
- Unpublished ms., 1996.[materials prepared for a workshop at the 1996 convention of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) - commentary on “Whole Language” reading instruction]
1993
- Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 13, pp. 750–752, 1993.
- Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 11, pp. 557–558, 1993.
1991
- In: Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 1991.
- Unpublished ms., 1991.[work on the syntax of infinitival complementation originally intended for the book Zero Syntax (1996), but orphaned in the final version of that book]
1989
- Unpublished ms., 1989.[Paper presented at GLOW in 1989, but never written up. Contains some still-interesting data and observations about counterfactual inversion and about short verb movement in English.]
1987
- Linguistic Inquiry, 17, pp. 126–140, 1987.
- In: Reuland, Eric and ter Meulen, Alice G. B. (eds.), The Linguistic Representation of (In)definiteness, pp. 98–129, 1987.
- In: UMass Occasional Papers in Linguistics, pp. 241–262, 1987.[a reply to this paper]
1985
- Linguistic Inquiry, 16, pp. 193–245, 1985.
1982
- The Linguistic Review, 1, pp. 297–344, 1982.
- , 1982.[submitted in August 1982, which at the time meant the degree was a 1983 PhD]
1981
- Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the North Eastern Linguistic Society, 1981.
1979
- Papers from the Fourteenth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 1979.
- Complementizer-Trace Phenomena and the Nominative Island ConditionProceedings of the Ninth Annual Meeting of the North Eastern Linguistic Society, 2, 1979.
- In: Safir, Ken (ed.), MIT Working Papers in Linguistics: Papers on Syllable Structure, Metrical Structure, and Harmony Processes, 1979.
1978
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 4, pp. 621–737, 1978.
- Unpublished ms., 1978.[A note written in 1998: “This was my MIT phonology generals paper. It contains a certain amount of misanalysis and misinformation, some of it silly in retrospect. But it was also the paper that invented Lexical Phonology, developed in the following year in an MIT generals paper by K.P. Mohanan and then taken up by Paul Kiparsky. The paper was written pre-PC, on a Smith Corona electric typewriter. In 1984, when I was teaching at UMass, there was a plan to include this paper in a Working Papers volume that was never produced. At that time, a typist was hired, who retyped the paper in MacWord. That is the version available here. I have not proofread the manuscript in this version, except to get some hacheks right, so typos and formatting errors abound.”]
1977
- Papers from the Thirteenth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 1977.[Reprinted in Y. Minori (ed.), Anthology of Overseas English Studies. Eichosa, Tokyo, 1979]