John B. Whitman

About

John B. Whitman is a professor in the Department of Linguistics at Cornell University, with a primary research interest in the problem of language variation, including its limits and predictors. His work explores how specific subsystems can vary across languages and what typological features co-occur systematically. This exploration has led him to work in areas such as historical linguistics, language acquisition, and synchronic syntactic variation across typologically similar languages, with a focus on Japanese and Korean, and additional research on Australian languages and German. In the field of syntax, Whitman has contributed to the configurationality debate, challenging the assumption that languages can vary radically in the articulation of their syntactic structure, and demonstrating that variation is more limited than previously believed. His recent work includes examining the relationship between phrase structure and word order, structural universals in relative clause structure, and crosslinguistic parallels in rightward movement. In historical phonology, he has studied the development of verbal conjugations in Japanese and Korean and their relation to transitivity, with an interest in the typological and factual implications of these developments. Whitman's research also encompasses diachronic topics such as syntactic change, grammaticalization, and the evolution of language structures, as well as Japanese synchrony and diachrony. His extensive publication record…

Research topics

• Linguistics
• Philosophy
• Computer Science
• World Wide Web
• Literature
• Art

Selected publications

• Korean: A Linguistic Introduction

  2020 · 92 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  In this accessible survey, two leading specialists introduce a broad range of topics in Korean linguistics, including the general historical background of the language, its phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics, and the interfaces between those areas. Expertly written and drawing on the authors' many years of experience, the book answers questions such as what languages is Korean related to, what is unique about the Korean sound system, and how are…

  Publisher

• A comparative approach to the vowel systems and harmonies in the Transeurasian languages and beyond

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2020 · 82 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  In this chapter the standard treatments of the Transeurasian vowel correspondences are reviewed, including their reconstructions of hypothetical proto-inventories, for the purpose of establishing a description of the Transeurasian vowel inventory and vowel harmony type. The review commences with a comparison of two major types of vowel-harmony systems in the Transeurasian languages, i.e. the palatal vs. the tongue-root harmony systems, and presents phonetic, phonological, and comparative evidenc…

  PublisherDOI

• The evolving Japanese: the dual structure hypothesis at 30

  Evolutionary Human Sciences · 2020 · 30 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  The population history of Japan has been one of the most intensively studied anthropological questions anywhere in the world, with a huge literature dating back to the nineteenth century and before. A growing consensus over the 1980s that the modern Japanese comprise an admixture of a Neolithic population with Bronze Age migrants from the Korean peninsula was crystallised in Kazurō Hanihara's influential 'dual structure hypothesis' published in 1991. Here, we use recent research in biological an…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Korean

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2019-11-14 · 12 citations

  bookSenior author

  In this accessible survey, two leading specialists introduce a broad range of topics in Korean linguistics, including the general historical background of the language, its phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics, and the interfaces between those areas. Expertly written and drawing on the authors' many years of experience, the book answers questions such as what languages is Korean related to, what is unique about the Korean sound system, and how are…

  PublisherDOI

• Neural correlates of semantic number: A cross-linguistic investigation

  Brain and Language · 2022-03-31 · 11 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Sungdai Cho

  12 shared

• Jaklin Kornfilt

  Syracuse University

  8 shared

• Waltraud Paul

  Centre de Recherches Linguistiques sur l'Asie Orientale

  7 shared

• Barbara Lust

  Cornell University

  6 shared

• Bjarke Frellesvig

  6 shared

• Lawton R. Burns

  California University of Pennsylvania

  6 shared

• John A. Cole

  6 shared

• Christophe Pallier

  Cognitive Neuroimaging Lab

  4 shared

Similar researchers at Cornell University

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• Marten van Schijndelh-16