The Linguistic Review, 19 (1-2) 147-150 Positive data involving auxiliary fronting are never evidence for a constraint such as the structure-dependent hypothesis. At best, positive data of any complexity are direct evidence for a simple-minded hypothesis, of the sort of ‘front the first auxiliary (after something or other)’. On the widespread assumption that negative data […]

Derivation and explanation in the Minimalist Program, 106-132

Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 19-4, 891-900 Lappin, Levine and Johnson (LLJ) categorize my first reply to their piece as something ’which addresses our main objection to the MP by attempting to present a substantive defense of economy conditions in the theory of grammar’. This is why I chose the paradigm I did, among other […]

Clitics in phonology, morphology and syntax, 405-431 This paper explores the conjecture that clitic doubling in languages like Spanish shares some fundamental aspects of the semantics of inalienable possession, especially if understood in terms of a syntax of the kind originally advocated by Szabolcsi (1983). A few paradigms are discussed where this correlation would explain […]

Artificial Life, 2001, 7(1), 3-31 In the research described here we extend past computational investigations of animal signaling by studying an artificial world in which a population of initially noncommunicating agents evolves to communicate about food sources and predators. Signaling in this world can be either beneficial (e.g., warning of nearby predators) or costly (e.g., […]