David Embick
Biographic Data
| ID | 408642 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David Embick |
| GIVEN NAMES | David |
| FAMILY NAME | Embick |
| SIGNATURE | EMBICK D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pennsylvania |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6697-4428 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 380 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Access to contextually-determined states in the interpretation of English stative participles
Stative passive participles (SPPs) differ in acceptability for different verbs: cf. The boxes are flattened/\#kicked. However, examples like those with kicked can be felicitous in very specific contexts, e.g. when box-kicking is an item to be checked off of a list: what will be called a 'Job is Done' (JiD) interpretation. An unresolved question in the prior literature is whether JiD is eventive or stative. This question takes on added significanc…
Affix priming with variable ING in English
Variation in the pronunciation of spoken words constitutes one of the primary challenges to theories of Spoken Word Recognition (SWR). In this paper we examine the processing and representation of a type of variation that is connected to morphology: variation in ING, which is found in words that vary between an -ing and an -in’ form. This variation, which is found in monomorphemes like awning in addition to affixed words, has been extensively stu…
On the Event-Structural Properties of the EnglishGet-Passive
An important discussion in theories of argument structure concerns the explanatory division of labor between thematic properties and event structure. English get-passives, analyzed in much previous work as differing thematically from be-passives, provide an interesting test case. We present an analysis of get-passives centered on the proposal that they contain additional event structure (realized as get) relative to their be counterparts. We empl…
The Motivation for Roots in Distributed Morphology
Within Distributed Morphology, it has been proposed that the lexical vocabulary consists of Roots: category-less primitives. The motivation for Roots is connected with a line of argument reaching back to Chomsky's “Remarks on Nominalization” concerning the representation of lexical categories and their role in syntax. At the center of the theory of Roots is the Two Domains Intuition: the idea that there are two different types of domains in which…
Opacity, transparency, and morphological priming
The dynamics of variation in individuals
This paper examines the factors conditioning the production of linguistic variables in real time by individual speakers: what we term the dynamics of variation in individuals . We propose a framework that recognizes three types of factors conditioning variation: sociostylistic, internal linguistic, and psychophysiological. We develop two main points against this background. The first is that sequences of variants produced by individuals display s…
The Morpheme
This book develops a theory of the morpheme in the framework of Distributed Morphology. Particular emphasis is devoted to the way in which functional morphemes receive their phonological form post-syntactically, through the operation of Vocabulary Insertion. In addition to looking closely at syncretism, the primary motivation for Vocabulary Insertion, the book examines allomorphy, blocking, and other key topics in the theory of the morpheme.
Roots and features (an acategorial postscript)
Localism versus Globalism in Morphology and Phonology
An argument that patterns of allomorphy reveal that morphology and phonology behave in a way that provides evidence for a Localist theory of grammar. In Localism versus Globalism in Morphology and Phonology, David Embick offers the first detailed examination of morphology and phonology from a phase-cyclic point of view (that is, one that takes into account recent developments in Distributed Morphology and the Minimalist program) and the only rece…
Variation and Morphosyntactic Theory
The study of the ‘dynamic’ aspects of language – variation and change – and the development of grammatical theory are often pursued independently of one another. Concentrating on morphosyntax, this article explores connections between these domains that are centered on the notion of ‘competition’. When the relationship between competition for grammaticality and competition for use is articulated, it is clear that grammar competition models of var…
Architecture and Blocking
We discuss theoretical approaches to blocking effects, with particular emphasis on cases in which words appear to block phrases (and perhaps vice versa). These approaches share at least one intuition: that syntactic and semantic features create possible "cells" or slots in which particular items can appear, and that blocking occurs when one such cell is occupied by one form as opposed to another. Accounts of blocking differ along two primary dime…
Distributed Morphology and the Syntax—Morphology Interface
A theory of the syntax/morphology interface is first, a theory of how ‘words’ and their internal structure – the traditional domain of morphology – relate to the structures generated by the syntax, and second, a theory of how the rules for deriving complex words relate to the rules for deriving syntactic structures. A prominent line of research in this area consists of approaches assuming some version of the Lexicalist Hypothesis. For present pur…
Blocking Effects and Analytic/synthetic Alternations
On the Status of Stems in Morphological Theory
To a first approximation, languages show two different types of morphological alternation, with ‘alternation ’ construed in a broad sense. One type is concatenative, involving what looks like the affixation of one piece to another; e.g. kick/kick-ed. Another type of alternation involves morphophonological
On the Structure of Resultative Participles in English
The article examines the structure of resultative participles in English: participles that denote a state resulting from a prior event, such as The cake is flattened or The metal is hammered.The analysis identifies distinct stative participles that derive from the different heights at which aspectual morphemes attach in a verbalizing structure.The Aspect head involved in resultative participles is shown to attach to a vP that is also found in (a)…
Movement Operations after Syntax
We develop a theory of movement operations that occur after the syntactic derivation, in the PF component, within the framework of Distributed Morphology.The theory is an extension of what was called Morphological Merger in Marantz 1984 and subsequent work.A primary result is that the locality properties of a Merger operation are determined by the stage in the derivation at which the operation takes place: specifically, Merger that takes place be…
Features, Syntax, and Categories in the Latin Perfect
The analysis centers on the notion of category in synthetic and analytic verbal forms and on the status of the feature that determines the forms of the Latin perfect. In this part of the Latin verbal system, active forms are synthetic ("verbs") but passive forms are analytic (i.e., participle and finite auxiliary). I show that the two perfects occur in essentially the same structure and are distinguished by a difference in movement to T; moreover…
Apropos pro
Pro -drop languages have restrictions on the reference of pro not found with the overt pronominals of non- pro -drop languages. In particular, while the overt pronouns of non- pro -drop languages may take clausal antecedents, C/IPs, pro may not take these elements as linguistic antecedents. This restriction on the referential properties of pro follows from a mismatch in Phi-features; pro , which is or is licensed by Phi-features, cannot corefer w…
Causativization in Hupa
Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on The Role of Learnability in Grammatical Theory (1996)
Movement Operations after Syntax
We develop a theory of movement operations that occur after the syntactic derivation, in the PF component, within the framework of Distributed Morphology.The theory is an extension of what was called Morphological Merger in Marantz 1984 and subsequent work.A primary result is that the locality properties of a Merger operation are determined by the stage in the derivation at which the operation takes place: specifically, Merger that takes place be…
Architecture and Blocking
We discuss theoretical approaches to blocking effects, with particular emphasis on cases in which words appear to block phrases (and perhaps vice versa). These approaches share at least one intuition: that syntactic and semantic features create possible "cells" or slots in which particular items can appear, and that blocking occurs when one such cell is occupied by one form as opposed to another. Accounts of blocking differ along two primary dime…
On the Structure of Resultative Participles in English
The article examines the structure of resultative participles in English: participles that denote a state resulting from a prior event, such as The cake is flattened or The metal is hammered.The analysis identifies distinct stative participles that derive from the different heights at which aspectual morphemes attach in a verbalizing structure.The Aspect head involved in resultative participles is shown to attach to a vP that is also found in (a)…
Features, Syntax, and Categories in the Latin Perfect
The analysis centers on the notion of category in synthetic and analytic verbal forms and on the status of the feature that determines the forms of the Latin perfect. In this part of the Latin verbal system, active forms are synthetic ("verbs") but passive forms are analytic (i.e., participle and finite auxiliary). I show that the two perfects occur in essentially the same structure and are distinguished by a difference in movement to T; moreover…
Blocking Effects and Analytic/synthetic Alternations
Apropos pro
Pro -drop languages have restrictions on the reference of pro not found with the overt pronominals of non- pro -drop languages. In particular, while the overt pronouns of non- pro -drop languages may take clausal antecedents, C/IPs, pro may not take these elements as linguistic antecedents. This restriction on the referential properties of pro follows from a mismatch in Phi-features; pro , which is or is licensed by Phi-features, cannot corefer w…
Variation and Morphosyntactic Theory
The study of the ‘dynamic’ aspects of language – variation and change – and the development of grammatical theory are often pursued independently of one another. Concentrating on morphosyntax, this article explores connections between these domains that are centered on the notion of ‘competition’. When the relationship between competition for grammaticality and competition for use is articulated, it is clear that grammar competition models of var…
The dynamics of variation in individuals
This paper examines the factors conditioning the production of linguistic variables in real time by individual speakers: what we term the dynamics of variation in individuals . We propose a framework that recognizes three types of factors conditioning variation: sociostylistic, internal linguistic, and psychophysiological. We develop two main points against this background. The first is that sequences of variants produced by individuals display s…
On the Event-Structural Properties of the EnglishGet-Passive
An important discussion in theories of argument structure concerns the explanatory division of labor between thematic properties and event structure. English get-passives, analyzed in much previous work as differing thematically from be-passives, provide an interesting test case. We present an analysis of get-passives centered on the proposal that they contain additional event structure (realized as get) relative to their be counterparts. We empl…
The Motivation for Roots in Distributed Morphology
Within Distributed Morphology, it has been proposed that the lexical vocabulary consists of Roots: category-less primitives. The motivation for Roots is connected with a line of argument reaching back to Chomsky's “Remarks on Nominalization” concerning the representation of lexical categories and their role in syntax. At the center of the theory of Roots is the Two Domains Intuition: the idea that there are two different types of domains in which…
Opacity, transparency, and morphological priming
Causativization in Hupa
Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on The Role of Learnability in Grammatical Theory (1996)
Apropos pro
Pro -drop languages have restrictions on the reference of pro not found with the overt pronominals of non- pro -drop languages. In particular, while the overt pronouns of non- pro -drop languages may take clausal antecedents, C/IPs, pro may not take these elements as linguistic antecedents. This restriction on the referential properties of pro follows from a mismatch in Phi-features; pro , which is or is licensed by Phi-features, cannot corefer w…
Features, Syntax, and Categories in the Latin Perfect
The analysis centers on the notion of category in synthetic and analytic verbal forms and on the status of the feature that determines the forms of the Latin perfect. In this part of the Latin verbal system, active forms are synthetic ("verbs") but passive forms are analytic (i.e., participle and finite auxiliary). I show that the two perfects occur in essentially the same structure and are distinguished by a difference in movement to T; moreover…
Movement Operations after Syntax
We develop a theory of movement operations that occur after the syntactic derivation, in the PF component, within the framework of Distributed Morphology.The theory is an extension of what was called Morphological Merger in Marantz 1984 and subsequent work.A primary result is that the locality properties of a Merger operation are determined by the stage in the derivation at which the operation takes place: specifically, Merger that takes place be…
On the Structure of Resultative Participles in English
The article examines the structure of resultative participles in English: participles that denote a state resulting from a prior event, such as The cake is flattened or The metal is hammered.The analysis identifies distinct stative participles that derive from the different heights at which aspectual morphemes attach in a verbalizing structure.The Aspect head involved in resultative participles is shown to attach to a vP that is also found in (a)…
On the Status of Stems in Morphological Theory
To a first approximation, languages show two different types of morphological alternation, with ‘alternation ’ construed in a broad sense. One type is concatenative, involving what looks like the affixation of one piece to another; e.g. kick/kick-ed. Another type of alternation involves morphophonological
Distributed Morphology and the Syntax—Morphology Interface
A theory of the syntax/morphology interface is first, a theory of how ‘words’ and their internal structure – the traditional domain of morphology – relate to the structures generated by the syntax, and second, a theory of how the rules for deriving complex words relate to the rules for deriving syntactic structures. A prominent line of research in this area consists of approaches assuming some version of the Lexicalist Hypothesis. For present pur…
Blocking Effects and Analytic/synthetic Alternations
Variation and Morphosyntactic Theory
The study of the ‘dynamic’ aspects of language – variation and change – and the development of grammatical theory are often pursued independently of one another. Concentrating on morphosyntax, this article explores connections between these domains that are centered on the notion of ‘competition’. When the relationship between competition for grammaticality and competition for use is articulated, it is clear that grammar competition models of var…
Architecture and Blocking
We discuss theoretical approaches to blocking effects, with particular emphasis on cases in which words appear to block phrases (and perhaps vice versa). These approaches share at least one intuition: that syntactic and semantic features create possible "cells" or slots in which particular items can appear, and that blocking occurs when one such cell is occupied by one form as opposed to another. Accounts of blocking differ along two primary dime…
Localism versus Globalism in Morphology and Phonology
An argument that patterns of allomorphy reveal that morphology and phonology behave in a way that provides evidence for a Localist theory of grammar. In Localism versus Globalism in Morphology and Phonology, David Embick offers the first detailed examination of morphology and phonology from a phase-cyclic point of view (that is, one that takes into account recent developments in Distributed Morphology and the Minimalist program) and the only rece…
Roots and features (an acategorial postscript)
The Morpheme
This book develops a theory of the morpheme in the framework of Distributed Morphology. Particular emphasis is devoted to the way in which functional morphemes receive their phonological form post-syntactically, through the operation of Vocabulary Insertion. In addition to looking closely at syncretism, the primary motivation for Vocabulary Insertion, the book examines allomorphy, blocking, and other key topics in the theory of the morpheme.
The dynamics of variation in individuals
This paper examines the factors conditioning the production of linguistic variables in real time by individual speakers: what we term the dynamics of variation in individuals . We propose a framework that recognizes three types of factors conditioning variation: sociostylistic, internal linguistic, and psychophysiological. We develop two main points against this background. The first is that sequences of variants produced by individuals display s…
Opacity, transparency, and morphological priming
The Motivation for Roots in Distributed Morphology
Within Distributed Morphology, it has been proposed that the lexical vocabulary consists of Roots: category-less primitives. The motivation for Roots is connected with a line of argument reaching back to Chomsky's “Remarks on Nominalization” concerning the representation of lexical categories and their role in syntax. At the center of the theory of Roots is the Two Domains Intuition: the idea that there are two different types of domains in which…
On the Event-Structural Properties of the EnglishGet-Passive
An important discussion in theories of argument structure concerns the explanatory division of labor between thematic properties and event structure. English get-passives, analyzed in much previous work as differing thematically from be-passives, provide an interesting test case. We present an analysis of get-passives centered on the proposal that they contain additional event structure (realized as get) relative to their be counterparts. We empl…
Affix priming with variable ING in English
Variation in the pronunciation of spoken words constitutes one of the primary challenges to theories of Spoken Word Recognition (SWR). In this paper we examine the processing and representation of a type of variation that is connected to morphology: variation in ING, which is found in words that vary between an -ing and an -in’ form. This variation, which is found in monomorphemes like awning in addition to affixed words, has been extensively stu…
Access to contextually-determined states in the interpretation of English stative participles
Stative passive participles (SPPs) differ in acceptability for different verbs: cf. The boxes are flattened/\#kicked. However, examples like those with kicked can be felicitous in very specific contexts, e.g. when box-kicking is an item to be checked off of a list: what will be called a 'Job is Done' (JiD) interpretation. An unresolved question in the prior literature is whether JiD is eventive or stative. This question takes on added significanc…
Linguistics (15 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (15 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Natural Language Processing Techniques (8 works) · Syntax (8 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (6 works) · Mathematics (5 works)