About

John Frederick Bailyn is a professor at the Department of Linguistics at Stony Brook University. He earned his Ph.D. in 1995 from Cornell University. His research focuses on Slavic Linguistics, Russian Syntax, Syntax, and Musical Cognition. As a faculty member, he contributes to the understanding of these areas through his scholarly work and teaching, supporting the department's mission to advance linguistic research and education.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Philosophy
• Linguistics
• Artificial Intelligence
• Political Science

Selected publications

• On “historical unity” of Russian and Ukrainian: A linguistic perspective on language conflict and change

  Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America · 2023 · 3 citations

  • Sociology
  • Linguistics
  • Computer Science

  This paper focuses on Putin’s (2021) misguided claim regarding “historical [linguistic] unity” of Russian and Ukrainian. Their being two distinct languages is not in question, as opposed (for example) to Serbian and Croatian. However, it is important to substantiate the objective reality of those differences, taking a strong stand against unjustified claims about linguistic [unity] where there are no grounds for them. Implementing a Python-coded algorithm, like those described in Nerbonne & Kretzschmar 2013, we calculate Levenshtein distance between frequency-based word lists, in a manner sensitive to both organic and contact-induced change, to fully reveal Ukrainian’s complex relationship with both Russian and Polish.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Introduction to the FASL 28 extra issue

  Journal of Slavic linguistics · 2021

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Linguistics
  PublisherDOI

• The Scrambling Paradox

  Linguistic Inquiry · 2020 · 19 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Linguistics
  • Computer Science

  It has been commonly observed that scrambling and wh-movement share sensitivity to strong movement constraints ( Webelhuth 1989 , Saito 1992 , Bailyn 1995 ). At the same time, the two processes clearly differ in certain other respects, such as wh-island sensitivity, a finding that has inspired a range of analyses of scrambling as entirely distinct from better-understood movement processes ( Müller and Sternefeld 1993 , Bošković and Takahashi 1998 , among many others). Careful comparison of Ā-scrambling and overt wh-movement in a language that shows both (Russian) reveals that this seemingly paradoxical behavior can be captured effectively in a probe-goal theory of scrambling that obeys a form of Relativized Minimality defined across feature classes, following Rizzi 2004 . The resulting analysis exposes the distinct nature of strong and weak islands, with consequences for our understanding of the core architecture of syntactic movement.

  PublisherDOI

• Russian

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2019-01-08 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter provides an overview of the major types of elliptical constructions in Russian: NP-ellipsis, clausal ellipsis (sluicing, sprouting, polarity ellipsis), vP-ellipsis, gapping, comparative deletion, Right-Node Raising, and fragment answers. The aim of this chapter is to examine these constructions in a cross-linguistic perspective, highlighting phenomena that seem peculiar to Russian, and outlining the set of restrictions on ellipsis licensing that does not differ from those of other languages. In addition, we discuss the controversial puzzle of verb-stranding constructions: these constructions seem to involve ellipsis, but its nature is still a matter of debate in the current literature.

  PublisherDOI

• Against a VP Ellipsis Account of Russian Verb-Stranding Constructions

  2017-01-01 · 59 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Language, Music, Fire, and Chess: Remarks on Music Evolution and Acquisition

  Communications in computer and information science · 2015-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Review: <em>Russian Case Morphology and the Syntactic Categories</em>

  Russian Language Journal · 2014-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  David Pesetsky’s Russian Case Morphology and the Syntactic Categories (MIT Press, 2013) is one of the most thought-provoking works of theoretical linguistics to appear in many years. It provides a startlingly original analysis of a well-known thorny problem of Russian morpho-syntax, embedding the analysis of that puzzle within a radical rethinking of the role of case in syntactic theory, and taking us on a journey of consequences and extensions that challenge one’s views of many aspects of minimalist theory, including key components of case theory, phrase structure, locality and others. If a monograph is to be judged by its creativity, its significance for the theoretical field at large and the range of details of its technical implementation, then Russian Case Morphology and the Syntactic Categories deserves mention among some of the most significant recent works of theoretical linguistics.

  PublisherDOI

• Annual Workshop on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics : The Second College Park Meeting 2010

  Michigan Slavic Publications eBooks · 2012-01-01

  book1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Note on transliteration

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2011-10-27 · 2 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

  PublisherDOI

• Frozen Scope and WCO: New Insights into the Structure of Russian Ditransitives

  LSA Annual Meeting Extended Abstracts · 2011-07-06

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We present novel data on Russian ditransitives with two Quantificational objects, which parallel the relevant English facts (Larson 1990) whereby inverse scope disappears when the quantificational Dative precedes the quantificational Accusative within the VP. We argue that the Russian facts should not be analyzed in terms of Superiority, as in English (Bruening 2001). Furthermore, wider possibilities for overt QP displacement in Russian and the scope freezing that obtains in such contexts (Antonyuk-Yudina 2009), taken with the observed parallelism between the two languages in the relevant respects, allow us a new perspective on the scope freezing in ditransitives for both languages.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Vladimir V. Konovaliouk

  State University of New York

  4 shared

• Svitlana Antonyuk-Yudina

  2 shared

• Andrei Antonenko

  University of Utah

  2 shared

• Jackson Ginn

  University of South Carolina

  1 shared

• Lei Liu

  Tianjin University

  1 shared

• Anna Melnikova

  1 shared

• Michael C. Gavin

  Colorado State University

  1 shared

• Željko Bošković

  University of Connecticut

  1 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  Cornell University

  1995