David Pesetsky

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

Selected publications

• 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 detail…

  PublisherDOI

• Evidence and Argumentation: A Reply to Everett (2009)

  Language · 2009-09-01 · 164 citations

  articleOpen access

  Evidence and argumentation:A reply to Everett (2009) Andrew Nevins, David Pesetsky, and Cilene Rodrigues This discussion note is a brief response to Everett (2009, E09), which was a reply to our assessment (Nevins, Pesetsky, & Rodrigues 2009, NP&R) of Everett's (2005, CA) earlier claims about the Amazonian language Pirahã. An important (and somewhat hidden) feature of E09 is a set of new empirical assertions presented in defense of CA's hypothesis that Pirahã lacks embedding. We argue that these…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 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 p…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 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 d…

  PublisherDOI

• Case

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2011-03-03 · 39 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  The minimalist program includes the important conjecture that all (or most) properties of syntactic computation in natural language should be understood as arising from either (1) the interactions of independent mental systems; or (2) ‘general properties of organic systems’. The study of case morphology and the distribution of nominal expressions in the languages of the world is one of the areas in which generative syntax has made the most-profound advances over previous approaches. A large (and…

  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

Similar researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Adam Albrighth-17
• Allan Doyleh-1