Cartography and the Passive

 This paper is chapter for the following volume:

Wolfe, Sam. Forthcoming. Mapping Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Link to paper:

Cartography and the Passive

Acceptability Judgments in ChatGPT (Study 2)

In this study, I am looking at structure dependence, which is an important concept for generative syntax. Based on a standard poverty of stimulus argument, structure dependence is taken to be part of UG (or derived from third factor considerations).

200,000 Visits for Ordinary Working Grammarian

As of 4:05 October 19, 2024, my blog Ordinary Working Grammarian has reached a total of 200,000 visits. The first blog post ever was March 14, 2017. So we have been going strong for over seven years.

The readership of the blog has dramatically increased since its inception. I only reached the 100,000 mark less than two years ago  on December 20, 2022.

In celebration of this fantastic milestone, I am posting a list of my most popular blog posts over the last year (in order of popularity). I have a broad readership throughout the world, so if you want to post as a guest, please let me know!

Acceptability Judgments in ChatGPT

On a dreary Saturday afternoon, I decided to ask ChatGPT a bunch of standard acceptability judgments. My prompt was this:

For each sentence, tell me if it is acceptable in spoken English or not. Do not give any explanations.

After that, I just typed in the sentences one after the other. And it spit out either 'Acceptable' or 'Not Acceptable.'

Bare Nominal Passives

 Abstract: In this squib, I introduce the bare nominal passive (‘a book by Chomsky’), and give an analysis for it in terms of a null passive participle. I provide evidence for the analysis from the distribution by-phrases, dative to-phrases, purposes clauses, and the Binding Theory. The analysis is argued to provide support for the principles of argument structure developed in Collins 2024.

Key Words: passive, implicit arguments, argument structure

Bare Nominal Passives

Hinton on Chomsky

The following videos are listed in reverse chronological order. For each video, I include the spots on video where Hinton talked about Chomsky (referring explicitly to Chomsky).

Syntax and Semantics (humorous)

Semantics pushed herself out of her recliner, after a lazy morning reading through her favorite novel, ‘Montague and his Discontents’. Her muscles felt stiff, and she felt the need for a brisk walk outside. There were little drops still hitting the window panes, but it was bound to clear up soon. So she jumped up and grabbed the leash.

A Smuggling Approach to HXPS

Abstract: This squib argues that Heavy XP Shift (HXPS) is to be analyzed as smuggling (in the sense of Collins 2005): The shifted constituent moves to Spec FocP, followed by vP movement smuggling the external argument around the focused constituent.

A Smuggling Approach to HXPS

Implicit Arguments for Dummies

In this post, I summarize my recent MIT Press monograph for non-linguists. 

Collins, Chris. 2024. Principles of Argument Structures: A Merge-Based Approach. MIT Press, Cambridge.