About

Boris Harizanov is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Stanford University. His main research interests lie in syntax, morphology, and prosody, as well as the interactions among them.

Research topics

• Linguistics
• Computer science
• Natural language processing
• Artificial intelligence
• History

Selected publications

• Head movement to specifier positions

  Glossa a journal of general linguistics · 2019-12-30 · 34 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Syntactic movement of phrases, modeled in terms of Internal Merge, has traditionally been distinguished on empirical grounds from syntactic movement of heads, modeled by other means. I demonstrate that, once the class of head movements implicated in word formation is excluded from consideration (assumed to be, for example, post-syntactic, following Harizanov & Gribanova 2019), the residue of head movements, which are purely syntactic in nature, and phrasal movement can receive a unified treatment. Both phrasal and syntactic head movement are implemented here as instances of Internal Merge (following, for example, Fukui & Takano 1998; Toyoshima 2001; Matushansky 2006; Vicente 2007; 2009). This treatment of syntactic head movement renders long-standing stipulations about structure building such as the Chain Uniformity Condition superfluous. It also makes sense of the properties of syntactic head movement, as demonstrated in a case study of participle fronting in Bulgarian, which targets a specifier position, violates the Head Movement Constraint, can cross finite clause boundaries, and can have discourse effects.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Prosodic Smothering in Macedonian and Kaqchikel

  Linguistic Inquiry · 2018-03-01 · 84 citations

  articleOpen access

  This article deals with a so-far unnoticed phenomenon in prosodic phonology, which we dub prosodic smothering. Prosodic smothering arises when the prosodic status of a clitic or affix varies with the presence or absence of some outer morpheme. We first illustrate prosodic smothering with novel data from two genetically unrelated languages, Macedonian (Slavic) and Kaqchikel (Mayan). We then provide a unified account of prosodic smothering based on a principled extension of the theory of prosodic subcategorization (e.g., Inkelas 1990 , Peperkamp 1997 , Chung 2003 , Yu 2003 , Paster 2006 , Bye 2007 ). Prosodic subcategorization typically involves requirements placed on items to the left or the right of the selecting morpheme. We show that prosodic smothering naturally emerges in a theory that also allows for subcategorization in the vertical dimension, such that morphemes may select for the prosodic category that immediately dominates them in surface prosodic structure. This extension successfully reduces two apparent cases of nonlocal prosodic conditioning to the effects of strictly local prosodic selection.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Word Formation at the Syntax-Morphology Interface: Denominal Adjectives in Bulgarian

  Linguistic Inquiry · 2018-03-01 · 8 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  A major goal in the study of the interface between syntax and morphology (understood as part of the PF component) is to understand mismatches between syntactic representations and the corresponding morphological representations. Denominal adjectives in Bulgarian provide one such mismatch. In morphology, they are composed of a nominal component D adjoined to an adjectivizing head F. In syntax, however, the nominal component D behaves like a nominal phrase occupying the specifier of F. Denominal adjectives in Bulgarian thus present both a structural mismatch whereby a syntactic specifier-head relation is mapped to head adjunction at PF and a mismatch between the syntactic and morphological category of denominal adjectives. I analyze these mismatches as the result of a morphological (postsyntactic) operation, which converts nominal phrases into denominal adjectives postsyntactically, as part of the word formation process that combines the nominal phrases with adjectivizing morphology. The proposal is an extension of the theory of the syntax-morphology mapping developed within Distributed Morphology ( Embick and Noyer 2001 , et seq.) on the basis of Marantz’s (1984) Morphological Merger and relies on the implementation of Morphological Merger developed by Harizanov (2014a) in the context of cliticization, itself an elaboration of Matushansky’s (2006) and Nevins’s (2011) proposals.

  PublisherDOI

• Whither head movement?

  Natural Language & Linguistic Theory · 2018-07-13 · 117 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Locality and Directionality in Inward-Sensitive Allomorphy: Russian and Bulgarian

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2017-01-19 · 46 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  Abstract Two central questions in the study of contextual allomorphy concern (i) how far away from each other the conditioning morpheme and the morpheme that is subject to allomorphy can be, and (ii) whether morphosyntactic features are rewritten by phonological ones in process of translating from one to the other (exponence). With respect to (i), evidence from Root-driven aspectual allomorphy This work has benefitted from discussions with Karlos Arregi, Ryan Bennett, Lev Blumenfeld, Jonathan Bobaljik, Sandy Chung, Amy Rose Deal, David Embick, Maria Gouskova, Jorge Hankamer, Junko Ito, Paul Kiparsky, Jesse Saba Kirchner, Ruth Kramer, Alec Marantz, Ora Matushansky, Jim McCloskey, Armin Mester, Andrew Nevins, Jaye Padgett, David Pesetsky, Maria Polinsky, Stephanie Shih, Peter Svenonius, Matt Tucker, Michael Wagner, Alan Yu, and audiences at GLOW 32, UCSC's Prosody Interest Group, Crosslinguistic Investigations in Syntax-Phonology (CrISP), the UCSC Morphology Reading Group and McGill University. We thank two anonymous volume referees for numerous very helpful comments. Section 32 of this chapter is based on a paper written by Gribanova that will appear in based on Gribanova (2015); she gratefully acknowledges their editors and referees for their insightful comments. For discussion of the data, thanks to Alexander Gribanov, Irina Gribanov and Boris Glants. All errors are the authors' responsibility in the Russian verbal complex points in favor of maintaining the restrictive assumption that allomorphic interactions should be constrained by a (linear) adjacency requirement. With respect to(ii), evidence from Bulgarian indicates that the form of the Bulgarian definiteness marker is inwardly sensitive both to phonological and morphosyntactic features, suggesting that both types of features must be available for reference at the point of allomorph choice.

  PublisherDOI

• The Role of Prosody in the Linearization of Clitics: Evidence from Bulgarian and Macedonian *

  2014-01-01 · 25 citations

  articleSenior author
  Publisher

• Clitic doubling at the syntax-morphophonology interface

  Natural Language & Linguistic Theory · 2014-07-02 · 114 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• On the Mapping from Syntax to Morphophonology

  eScholarship (California Digital Library) · 2014-01-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  If both words and phrases are internally complex and can be decomposed into hierarchically organized constituents, what is the relation between the syntactically motivated constituency of phrases and the morphophonologically motivated constituency of words? In particular, is the correspondence between syntactic atoms and morphophonological words one-to-one or, in other words, does syntax only manipulate objects that are as small as words? These questions have generated a long line of productive research that has identified various mismatches between syntax and morphophonology: e.g. while some syntactic atoms are realized as autonomous morphophonological words, others are realized as subparts of words. Such results have, in turn, motivated approaches to word construction that are syntactic in nature.In this dissertation I provide novel evidence that the atoms of syntax are smaller than morphophonological words, which leads to the conclusion words are built out of syntactic objects and, at least in part, by syntactic mechanisms. As far as the cases investigated here are concerned, what gives words their distinctive character and causes them to behave differently from phrases with respect to morphophonology is the application of Morphological Merger. Specifically, syntactically independent objects become the constituent parts of morphophonological words as the result of Morphological Merger, an operation that produces complex heads as part of the mapping from syntax to morphophonology.The evidence I provide in this dissertation allows a particularly direct diagnosis of the syntactic independence of various subconstituents of morphophonological words. More specifically, it involves, for example, the interaction of subwords with syntactic operations (like movement), quantifier stranding, various kinds of binding, and thematic interpretation. Furthermore, while much previous work on complex word formation has centered on words constructed by the combination of a head with its complement (e.g. "incorporation") or with the head of its complement (e.g. "head movement"), this dissertation focuses on a less studied correspondence between syntax and morphophonology: words constructed out of a head and its specifier.The particular view of the syntax-morphophonology interface espoused in this dissertation is developed on the basis of case studies from Bulgarian, a South Slavic language. As a result, a major concern throughout is the description and analysis of a number of important phenomena attested in Bulgarian: cliticization and clitic doubling, deverbal nominalization, and denominal adjectivization, among others. This dissertation provides a unified understanding of these phenomena to the extent that they all involve the syntactic construction of morphophonological words, which are produced by a mapping procedure that involves the application of Morphological Merger.

  Publisher

• On the Mapping from Syntax to Morphophonology - eScholarship

  2014-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  If both words and phrases are internally complex and can be decomposed into hierarchically organized constituents, what is the relation between the syntactically motivated constituency of phrases and the morphophonologically motivated constituency of words? In particular, is the correspondence between syntactic atoms and morphophonological words one-to-one or, in other words, does syntax only manipulate objects that are as small as words? These questions have generated a long line of productive research that has identified various mismatches between syntax and morphophonology: e.g. while some syntactic atoms are realized as autonomous morphophonological words, others are realized as subparts of words. Such results have, in turn, motivated approaches to word construction that are syntactic in nature.In this dissertation I provide novel evidence that the atoms of syntax are smaller than morphophonological words, which leads to the conclusion words are built out of syntactic objects and, at least in part, by syntactic mechanisms. As far as the cases investigated here are concerned, what gives words their distinctive character and causes them to behave differently from phrases with respect to morphophonology is the application of Morphological Merger. Specifically, syntactically independent objects become the constituent parts of morphophonological words as the result of Morphological Merger, an operation that produces complex heads as part of the mapping from syntax to morphophonology.The evidence I provide in this dissertation allows a particularly direct diagnosis of the syntactic independence of various subconstituents of morphophonological words. More specifically, it involves, for example, the interaction of subwords with syntactic operations (like movement), quantifier stranding, various kinds of binding, and thematic interpretation. Furthermore, while much previous work on complex word formation has centered on words constructed by the combination of a head with its complement (e.g. incorporation ) or with the head of its complement (e.g. head movement ), this dissertation focuses on a less studied correspondence between syntax and morphophonology: words constructed out of a head and its specifier.The particular view of the syntax-morphophonology interface espoused in this dissertation is developed on the basis of case studies from Bulgarian, a South Slavic language. As a result, a major concern throughout is the description and analysis of a number of important phenomena attested in Bulgarian: cliticization and clitic doubling, deverbal nominalization, and denominal adjectivization, among others. This dissertation provides a unified understanding of these phenomena to the extent that they all involve the syntactic construction of morphophonological words, which are produced by a mapping procedure that involves the application of Morphological Merger.

  Publisher

• Noun classes grow on trees

  Typological studies in language · 2013-11-25 · 20 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  Noun classes (genders) have long played an important role in the understanding of language structure and human categorization. This study presents and analyzes the division of nouns into classes in Tsez (Dido), an endangered Nakh-Dagestanian language of the North-East Caucasus. Computational modeling of the Tsez system shows that noun classification in Tsez is highly predictable, with a simple semantic core and a set of highly salient formal features that can be ranked with respect to one another. Such a system would be easily accessible to children acquiring the language, and the proposed analysis does not require additional semantic or categorical assumptions. The study serves as a proof of principle for the computational approach to the analysis of noun classification.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Maria Polinsky

  4 shared

• Vera Gribanova

  3 shared

• Keith Plaster

  IIT@Harvard

  2 shared

• Ekaterina Kravtchenko

  Saarland University

  2 shared

• Václav Koula

  1 shared

• Robert Henderson

  University of Arizona

  1 shared

• Lucie Taraldsen Medová

  Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Language Institute

  1 shared

• Michigan Slavic Publications

  1 shared