About

David Pesetsky is the Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he also holds the position of Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow. His research interests encompass syntax and its interfaces with morphology and semantics, with a particular focus on the syntax of music. Pesetsky has made significant contributions to the understanding of syntactic structure, movement, and the interface between syntax and other linguistic components. His work includes influential theories on phrasal movement, cyclic linearization of syntactic structure, and the syntactic categories that underpin language. Throughout his career, he has authored numerous publications, including books such as 'Russian Case Morphology and the Syntactic Categories' and 'Phrasal Movement and its Kin,' and has contributed to the broader field through articles and chapters on linguistic universals, minimalism, and the syntax of time and case. Pesetsky's research is characterized by a rigorous approach to syntactic theory, and he has been an active participant in the development of contemporary generative grammar, with a focus on the structural and functional aspects of language.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Linguistics
• Philosophy
• Natural Language Processing
• Political Science
• Physics
• Artificial Intelligence
• Mathematics
• Psychology
• Law
• Acoustics

Selected publications

• Arguments from case for a derivational theory of finiteness

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2024 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Linguistics
  • Philosophy

  Abstract This chapter argues for a derivational view of nonfinite clause formation, defusing what have been taken as strong arguments against an otherwise attractive link between nominative case and agreement with finite T. In particular, it is argued that nonfinite clauses are not distinguished from their finite counterparts as a matter of lexical choice. Instead, all clauses are built as full finite CPs, and are infinitivized in the course of the derivation. Where the current consensus views the special behaviour of subjects in a nonfinite clause as a consequence of building an infinitival clause, this chapter argues that the causal arrow points in the opposite direction. A clause becomes infinitival as a consequence of a higher probe targeting its subject in a particular configuration, triggering a rule of Exfoliation. The proposal unifies this discussion with an account of the complementizer-trace effect in finite clauses—a unique advantage of the Exfoliation approach.

  PublisherDOI

• <em>Wh-which</em> relatives and the existence of pied-piping

  Glossa a journal of general linguistics · 2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Linguistics
  • Political Science

  This paper describes and offers an analysis of a kind of relative clause acceptable to some English speakers that we call a wh-which relative, e.g. the snowmen whom (of) which the children loved. We propose that these relatives involve the movement of a phrase headed by an element that we call R, analogous to the Q posited by Cable (2010a, 2010b) for interrogatives — the optional of in the example above being an overt form of a special variant of R. The syntax of this variant resembles particularly closely the variant of Q proposed by Coon (2009) for Ch’ol interrogatives in triggering movement to its specifier — but with a puzzle that has a parallel in Finnish, for which we propose a tentative solution. The analysis thus supports the overall explanatory landscape for pied-piping phenomena proposed by Cable, but presents a challenge to his broader claim that all pied-piping phenomena can be explained in this way. If correct, it provides yet one more instance of the "unity in diversity" of syntactic structures across the world’s languages.

  PublisherDOI

• The size of things I

  2021

  • Computer Science
  • Linguistics
  • Computer Science

  This book focuses on the role size plays in grammar. Under the umbrella term size fall the size of syntactic projections, the size of feature content, and the size of reference sets. The contributions in this first volume discuss size and structure building. The most productive research program in syntax where size plays a central role revolves around clausal complements. Part 1 of Volume I contributes to this program with papers that argue for particular structures of clausal complements, as well as papers that employ sizes of clausal complements to account for other phenomena. The papers in Part 2 of this volume explore the interaction between size and structure building beyond clausal complements, including phenomena in CP, vP, and NP domains. The contributions cover a variety of languages, many of which are understudied. The book is complemented by Volume II which discusses size effects in movement, agreement, and interpretation.

  Publisher

• Complementizer‐Trace Effects

  The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition · 2017-11-22 · 53 citations

  other1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Perlmutter observed that English wh ‐movement obeys a puzzling constraint: an asymmetry between subject extraction and non‐subject extraction that interacts with the complementizer system. While wh ‐extraction of a non‐subject from a finite embedded clause is compatible with the presence or absence of the word that introducing the clause, extraction of the subject is possible only when that is omitted: a. ✓ Who do you think that Sue met ____?/ ✓ Who do you think Sue met ____? b. * Who do you think that ____ met Sue?/ ✓ Who do you think ____ met Sue? The effect has come to be known as the “ that‐ trace effect,” a member of a family of possibly broader sets of phenomena, all called “complementizer‐trace effects.” A strong poverty of the stimulus argument makes it clear that these phenomena are rooted in innate properties of human language. The discovery of these effects in multiple diverse and unrelated languages reinforces this conclusion, especially when coupled with the availability of independently supported explanations for the absence of similar effects in other specific languages. On the other hand, quite distinct accounts have been offered for complementizer‐trace effects, and there is no consensus yet as to which of these approaches is most likely to prove correct. Linear accounts have been proposed that specifically bar extraction from positions right‐adjacent to elements of the complementizer system; these accounts are supported by claimed interactions with the presence/absence of prosodic boundaries between the two. Alternative structure‐based accounts that have proved influential include structural locality requirements on extraction sites that occupy particular syntactic positions – as well as proposals that take an opposite approach, banning movement that is too local. Thus, although the importance of complementizer‐trace effects for linguistic theory is clear, the deeper source of these effects remains a matter of controversy.

  PublisherDOI

• Recursive misrepresentations: A reply to Levinson (2013)

  Language · 2014-06-01 · 96 citations

  articleOpen access

  Levinson 2013 (L13) argues against the idea that ‘recursion, and especially recursive center embedding, might be the core domain-specific property of language’ (p. 159), citing crosslinguistic grammatical data and specific corpus studies. L13 offers an alternative: language inherits its recursive properties ‘from the action domain’ (p. 159). We argue that L13's claims are at best unwarranted and can in many instances be shown to be false. L13's reasoning is similarly flawed— in particular, the presumption that center-embedding can stand proxy for embedding (and clausal embedding can stand proxy for recursion). Thus, no support remains for its conclusions. Furthermore, though these conclusions are pitched as relevant to specific claims that have been published about the role of syntactic recursion, L13 misrepresents these claims. Consequently, even an empirically supported, better-reasoned version of L13 would not bear on the questions it claims to address.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• DISCUSSION NOTE Recursive misrepresentations:A reply to Levinson (2013)

  2014-01-01

  articleSenior author
  Publisher

• RHFXrVLvH PLVrHprHVHntDtLR nV: $ rHpl\ tR LHvLnVRn (20

  2014-01-01

  article
  Publisher

• Russian Case Morphology and the Syntactic Categories

  The MIT Press eBooks · 2013-12-27 · 320 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  A proposal for a radical new view of case morphology, supported by a detailed investigation of some of the thorniest topics in Russian grammar. In this book, David Pesetsky argues that the peculiarities of Russian nominal phrases provide significant clues concerning the syntactic side of morphological case. Pesetsky argues against the traditional view that case categories such as nominative or genitive have a special status in the grammar of human languages. Supporting his argument with a detailed analysis of a complex array of morpho-syntactic phenomena in the Russian noun phrase (with brief excursions to other languages), he proposes instead that the case categories are just part-of-speech features copied as morphology from head to dependent as syntactic structure is built. Pesetsky presents a careful investigation of one of the thorniest topics in Russian grammar, the morpho-syntax of noun phrases with numerals (including those traditionally called the paucals). He argues that these bewilderingly complex facts can be explained if case categories are viewed simply as parts of speech, assigned as morphology. Pesetsky's analysis is notable for offering a new theoretical perspective on some of the most puzzling areas of Russian grammar, a highly original account of nominal case that significantly affects our understanding of an important property of language.

  PublisherDOI

• An Independent Argument from Gender Agreement for the Initial Low Position of Paucals

  The MIT Press eBooks · 2013-12-20

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Phrasal Movement and Its Discontents: Diseases and Diagnoses

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2013-07-25 · 11 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The chapter starts from the observation that a diagnostic is simply an argument in which one has particular confidence, put to practical use. The logical space of possible arguments for phrasal movement is sketched and exemplified with examples of such arguments, some well‐known and others more recently proposed. Hartman’s (2012) discussion of intervention effects is cited as an instance in which an established property of movement (intervention effects in A‐movement constructions) diagnosed the distribution of movement in a more poorly understood construction (English tough movement). The question of whether phrasal movement exists in the first place is taken up, in the context of the history of its discovery and current syntactic approaches that dispense with it.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Charles Yang

  10 shared

• Julie Anne Legate

  10 shared

• Andrew Nevins

  University College London

  5 shared

• Cilene Rodrigues

  Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro

  5 shared

• Esther Torrego

  4 shared

• Thomas Eccardt

  New York City College of Technology

  3 shared

• Alvin M. Liberman

  3 shared

• Bruno H. Repp

  Haskins Laboratories

  3 shared

Labs

• MIT Linguistics Reading Groups and LabsPI

Education

• Ph.D., Linguistics

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  1975

• B.A., Linguistics

  Harvard University

  1970

Awards & honors

• Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow