About

Julie Anne Legate is a Professor and Chair of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is based at the Department of Linguistics located at 3401-C Walnut Street, Rm 331. She earned her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002. Her research focuses on syntactic theory, including the syntax, morphosyntax, and syntax-semantics interface of endangered, understudied, and typologically interesting languages. She has secondary research interests in language acquisition, with particular attention to phenomena such as passives, impersonals, causatives, null subjects, case, and locality domains. Legate co-directs the Penn Syntax Lab with Matt Hewett and has served as the Editor-in-Chief of Natural Language & Linguistic Theory for ten years. Her work involves mapping the boundaries of human language, and her recent projects include studying syntactic islands, Mandarin bridge verbs, null subjects in Brazilian Portuguese, and the analysis of passives, impersonals, and evidentials across various languages. Her notable contributions include award-winning research on passives of passives, typologies of voices in impoverished UG, and the place of case in grammar. She has published extensively on topics such as ergativity, recursion, clause embedding, and the morphosyntax of various languages, including Warlpiri, Irish, Acehnese, and Lithuanian. Legate's research is characterized by detailed theoretical analysis and cross-linguistic comparison, advancing understanding of syntactic structures and their interfaces.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Philosophy
• Linguistics
• Natural Language Processing
• Epistemology
• Mathematics
• History

Selected publications

• On theories of Case and Universal Grammar

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Linguistics

  Abstract This chapter argues that dependent case is insufficient as a universal theory of case; case assignment by a syntactic head must also be recognized. Exemplars include grammatical object passives, Lithuanian active existentials, and Icelandic indirect causatives. Finally, it is demonstrated that dative-nominative constructions in Icelandic, which have long been taken to require a dependent case analysis, are fully compatible with case assignment by a syntactic head. This work is envisioned as a piece in a larger programme arguing that Universal Grammar, the innate component of the faculty of language, does not contain information specific to case. The child learns case assignment rules on the basis of innate knowledge of the hierarchical structure building operation merge, combined with evidence in the input. Since hierarchical relationships between heads and nominals are provided by merge, these relationships can be used by the child to form language-specific case assignment rules.

  PublisherDOI

• On Passives of Passives

  Language · 2020 · 44 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Linguistics
  • Philosophy

  Perlmutter and Postal (1977 and subsequent) argued that passives cannot passivize. Three prima facie counterexamples have come to light, found in Turkish, Lithuanian, and Sanskrit. We reexamine these three cases and demonstrate that rather than counterexemplifying Perlmutter and Postal's generalization, these confirm it. The Turkish construction is an impersonal of a passive, the Lithuanian is an evidential of a passive, and the Sanskrit is an unaccusative with an instrumental case-marked theme. We provide a syntactic analysis of both the Turkish impersonal and the Lithuanian evidential. Finally, we develop an analysis of the passive that captures the generalization that passives cannot passivize.

  PublisherDOI

• Noncanonical Passives: A Typology of Voices in an Impoverished Universal Grammar

  Annual Review of Linguistics · 2020 · 28 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Linguistics
  • History
  • Philosophy

  Noncanonical passives crosslinguistically exhaust the space of possible variation, supporting an approach whereby Universal Grammar is underspecified for the characteristics of voice and the properties of any particular construction are learned through experience. Languages considered include Passamaquoddy and Oji-Cree (Algonquian); Dutch and Icelandic (Germanic); Ukrainian (Slavic); Welsh and Irish (Celtic); Hindi (Indo-Aryan); Acehnese, Indonesian, and Manggarai (Malayo-Polynesian); Sason Arabic (Arabic); Bemba and Kirundi (Bantu); Lithuanian (Baltic); Turkish (Turkic); and Mandarin (Sinitic).

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Locus of Ergative Case

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2017-08-10 · 44 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter demonstrates that for a diverse range of languages the assignment of ergative case is determined by a cluster of factors, which vary between the languages. While ergative assignment thus resists a simple, uniform analysis, the relevant factors are consistently based low in the clausal structure, centered around vP. The low factors identified include the theta-position and theta-role of the subject, the presence of a complement, the presence of a DP object, the case of the object, the presence of object agreement, and the Aspect selecting vP. Illustrative languages examined are Tsova-Tush (East Caucasian), Nez Perce (Sahaptin), Warlpiri (South-West Pama-Nyungan), Tshangla (Tibeto-Burman), and Hindi/Urdu (Indo-Aryan). Kurmanji Kurdish (Iranian) and Yukulta (Tangic) are also considered: here, the governing factors of ergative case assignment are prima facie high in the clause, based in TP/CP. These languages are revealed to instead fall under the low ergative pattern.

  PublisherDOI

• 07 - Minipresentations on current citation practices in journals and subfields

  ScholarSpace (University of Hawaii at Manoa) · 2015-09-23

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Editors of linguistic journals representing a range of subfields assess: 1) the kinds of data used by their authors; 2) their respective publication's existing data citation standard; 3) expectations for data citation in their publication's subfield; 4) barriers to implementing data citation standards in both the journal and the subfield; and 5) the benefits of implementing such standards. Presented at the first workshop on Developing Standards for Data Citation and Attribution for Reproducible Research in Linguistics, held at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 09/18/15-09/20/15.

  Publisher

• INPUT AND ITS STRUCTURAL DESCRIPTION

  2015-01-01 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author
  Publisher

• Recursive misrepresentations: A reply to Levinson (2013)

  Language · 2014-06-01 · 96 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  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

• A Cline of Passives

  The MIT Press eBooks · 2014-11-28

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter extends the analysis of restrictive phi-features to explain the properties of grammatical object passives in Icelandic, Ukrainian, and Irish. Grammatical object passives are notable in exhibiting accusative objects, like actives, while allowing by-phrases, like passives. The restrictive phi-features occupy the specifier of VoiceP, allowing accusative case to be assigned in satisfaction of Burzio’s Generalization, while leaving the initiator position unsaturated. The analysis explains the close relationship between grammatical object passives and impersonals, whereby cognates pattern differently in closely related languages and dialects. Grammatical object passives contain a PhiP in the specifier of VoiceP, which restricts the external argument position; impersonals add a DP layer above PhiP, yielding a DP that saturates the external argument position. Taken together, the passive voice, grammatical object passive, object voice, and impersonal, demonstrate how slight differences in the syntactic structure of VoiceP can yield a variety of constructions with behaviors that differ from the canonical active voice.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  The MIT Press eBooks · 2014-11-28

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter introduces the topic of the book -- the syntactic structure of voice -- and situates the book within related discussion in the literature. The main claims of the book are previewed, and the basics of Acehnese clause structure are provided. The content of each subsequent chapter is outlined.

  PublisherDOI

• Object Voice

  The MIT Press eBooks · 2014-11-28

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter provides a syntactic analysis for the object voice in Acehnese, and related languages. The initiator remains in its theta-position in the specifier of VoiceP, while the theme raises to become the grammatical subject. An explanation is provided for the apparent locality violation. Contrasts between the behavior of the initiator in the object voice and the initiator in the passive voice provide additional support for the analysis of the object voice initiator as occupying the specifier of VoiceP, and the passive voice initiator as in a prepositional phrase adjoined to VoiceP. An appendix to the chapter proposes a new solution to the long-standing problem of why A’-movement of a DP requires the passive or object voice with the grammatical subject position left empty.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Charles Yang

  15 shared

• David Pesetsky

  10 shared

• Carolyn Smallwood

  2 shared

• Nick Thieberger

  University of Melbourne

  1 shared

• Allison Ellman

  Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

  1 shared

• Felix K. Ameka

  1 shared

• Faruk Akkuş

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  1 shared

• Stanley Dubinsky

  University of South Carolina

  1 shared

Labs

• Department of Linguistics, University of PennsylvaniaPI

Education

• Ph.D., Syntax, morphology, syntax-morphology interface, language acquisition

  MIT

  2002