Dominique Sportiche works on formal syntax. He has focused on the theory of constituent structure, and properties of the syntax/semantics interface (especially in French and the Romance languages) as they bear on the architecture of syntactic or grammatical theory and on cognition in general. He has published work on phrase structure, agreement, clitics, and reconstruction phenomena. His current theoretical interests and ongoing works include phrase structure and the functional sequence, the internal structure of VPs, reconstruction phenomena and the binding theory. From an empirical standpoint his work focalizes primarily on various aspects of the syntax systems of English, and of French and the Romance languages (complementizers, relative pronouns, reflexive constructions, binding theory). In recent years his work has extended to the relation between linguistic theory and (i) linguistic impairment (in Huntington’s disease patients), (ii) very early acquisition of syntax and (iii) grounding theoretical choices in more systematic methods of data collection and control (particularly regarding the binding theory, and the French complementizer system).

Dominique Sportiche is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles.

This talk is presented by the Department of Linguistics. For more information please contact Nathan Arnett, nvarnett@ucsc.edu.