My Principal Contributions to Syntactic Theory

I list my top contributions to syntactic theory. Each of these contributions is either a theoretical innovation and/or a major empirical discovery or exploration. The main criteria for inclusion in the list is: The subjective impact that they have already had on syntactic theory, or the potential impact. In other words, they are not chosen based on citation indices. They are listed roughly in order of subjective impact. 

I have worked on many other very interesting empirical problems including conjunction adverbs, relative clause deletion, negating quantifier phrases, neg-raising, pluractionality, verbal linkers, null prepositions, serial verb constructions, etc. All of these studies have been influential in their own way, but they have more limited theoretical or empirical scope, so I do not include them in the list below.

1. Imposters (with Paul Postal)

2. Merge-Based Theory of Implicit Arguments

3. Smuggling Derivations

4. Formalizing Minimalist Syntax (with Edward Stabler)

5. Quotative Inversion (with Phil Branigan)

6. Eliminating Labels (Simplest Merge)

7. Morphology as Syntax (with Richard Kayne)

Taken together these contributions reflect several consistent threads in my research. A major feature of my work is a commitment to deep empirical exploration of particular phenomena (e.g., imposters, quotative inversion), revealing new and interesting generalizations, connections to other languages, and suprising insights into the structure of the human language faculty. Equally important is a commitment to articulating highly syntactic analyses of various phenomena, and comparing them to alternative non-syntactic accounts. Lastly, my work is defined by a commitment to a deep understanding of the theoretical foundations of the field of natural language syntax. These three strands define my work as a syntactician.