• Theoretical linguistics: syntax and interfaces between syntax, morphology, and phonology.
• Acquisition of Syntax.
• Role of optimization in formal models of variation; Optimality Theory in syntax and acquisition of syntax.
• Cross-linguistic variation in syntax and morphology (with a particular focus on French and Balkan languages).
• General cognitive architecture underlying the language faculty.

How does universal grammar arise from neural computation?

The central notion of grammar as conceived in my earliest work in Relational Grammar[refs] is that a grammatical sentence is one that satisfies a set of parallel, inviolable well-formedness constraints. This formed the basis of a collaboration with Paul Smolensky who had developed general characterizations of neural computation as parallel satisfaction of violable well-formedness constraints — optimization. In 1990, under NSF funding, we developed the first grammar formalism derived from neural computation, Harmonic Grammar [refs]. We developed this optimization-based framework through the analysis of a problem in French syntax that I had intensively studied in earlier work: unaccusativity mismatches [refs]. Harmonic Grammar was then used by Smolensky in collaboration with another linguist, Alan Prince, to study problems in phonology rather than syntax. This work led them to develop Optimality Theory (OT) between 1991 and 1993. This theory extended Harmonic Grammar in ways important for the formal study of linguistic universals, while moving it further from its neural computational basis; syntax was not addressed. In OT, a structure is grammatical if it is optimal relative to its competing structures, in the sense of best satisfying the conflicting demands of a set of simultaneous, universal constraints with differing strengths. Cross-linguistic variation exists because different constraints may have different strengths in different languages. Given a set of constraints, it is possible to compute a factorial typology of languages which formally expresses the extent to which linguistic systems may vary.

How can the role of optimization in syntax be formalized?

My earlier work on Harmonic Grammar having suggested an important role for optimization in syntax, I set out to see whether the refined formalization of optimization provided by Optimality Theory could be applied to syntax. There are numerous new challenges that syntax provides for OT, which in 1992 was still in development for phonology by Prince & Smolensky. Smolensky and I collaborated again to extend OT to syntax; with one of my students, we gave the first conference presentation of work in OT syntax in February 1993. Building on earlier work of mine in case-based syntax [refs], we had set out to test the power of our conception of OT syntax in the cross-linguistic domain of case marking systems (accusative, ergative, and stative) and voice (passive, antipassive, and reversal). We showed that highly general and rampantly violated constraints on the mapping of argument structure to syntax (e.g., ‘agents are subjects’), when formalized in OT, entailed a small typology of possible languages which we were able to document empirically [refs].

A second crucial challenge to OT posed by syntax had to be addressed next: How can it be that certain meanings are ineffable — inexpressible — in some languages, if the best alternative expression of a meaning is, by definition, grammatical? (For example, one cannot form a question that has two question words like ‘What did he send where?’ in Italian or Irish.) A final collaborative project with Smolensky, started in 1993, was the first to address this important problem. In joint work with several of my students under NSF funding, we argued that correctly incorporating into syntax the two types of constraint families active in OT phonology — markedness constraints and input-output faithfulness constraints — provided a straightforward answer to the ineffability question. An input (a meaning) is ineffable when faithfulness is outranked by markedness, yielding as optimal an output whose meaning is distinct from the one intended in the input [refs]. This completely new idea was presented at a number of forums in 1994 and 1995, including the MIT conference on Optimality in Syntax, and has since been adopted by many OT syntacticians (P. Ackema, A. Neeleman, E.Bakovic, E. Keer, C. Wilson, and others).

The work in which we investigated ineffability is in fact a novel, general OT theory of extraction phenomena (in particular wh- and related movement), providing an in-depth account of over a dozen constructions in three typologically diverse languages (English, Bulgarian, Chinese). This theory is the only one I’m aware of that manages to derive ‘relativized minimality’ effects in extraction phenomena from the OT-interaction of simple violable constraints, none of which involve minimality or relativization [refs]. The paper [ref: see previous #24], in press from 1995 to 1998, provides a simple, general characterization of the theory, a high-level, encapsulated version of the grammars for English, Bulgarian, and Chinese, and a wide-ranging discussion of the theory’s typological predictions.

These projects established the groundwork of a general approach to syntax in OT. My work since 1995 has focused on explaining further syntactic and interface phenomena as well as testing OT as a model of acquisition of syntax.

What is the formal architecture of the grammar? Is the relation between components of the grammar a derivational/sequential one or a parallel one?

Investigating this important issue requires examining the interface between components and focusing on key phenomena which straddle several components, like clitics (syntax, morphology, and prosody). Clitics are phonologically weak elements (such as Romance object pronouns and Balkan tense auxiliaries) which, traditionally, have been taken to play a role in the syntax. Yet, they are subject to positional restrictions unheard of for syntactic categories, including prosodically-based ones. In a series of studies of three different Balkan languages with three different clitic patterns [refs]culminating in a recently completed synthesis [ref: see previous #51], I have argued that the positioning of clitics is largely the result of the interaction of two basic violable interface alignment constraints, one that favors aligning the phonological (PF) realization of a feature as near as possible to the edge of a syntactic phrase domain, and the other disfavoring positioning it at the very edge of an intonational phrase domain. Other constraints, syntactic or prosodic, may also affect their positioning with the consequence that the range of cross-linguistic variation reduces to two broad constraint rankings: syntax outranking PF, and PF outranking syntax. This work, as well as the extension described in the next paragraph, entails that the relation between components is a parallel, rather than a derivational, one.

What is the status of (inflectional) morphology in the grammar? Is it subsumed under syntax? Is it a separate component, sandwiched between syntax and phonology? Is it subsumed under the lexicon? Is it none of these?

My work on clitics since 1996 and its recent extension to functional categories in general (including Tense and Agreement) [refs] have confronted this contentious issue head-on. A detailed analysis of the syntactic behavior of clitic auxiliaries and clitic pronouns in Balkan languages has convinced me that they are morphological categories — phrasal affixes — that are syntactically inert, contrary to the belief held by many generative syntacticians. A detailed study of verb-second phenomena in Breton [refs] and Basque [refs] and the fact that these phenomena are often masked that is, demonstrably present but not overtly detectable — have also convinced me that finiteness features (Tense and Agreement) are subject to the same violable interface alignment constraints as clitics. In particular, the verb second phenomenon is blind to the syntactic or morphological status of auxiliaries. I have argued that a unified analysis is only possible if verb second is construed as resulting from the interaction of violable PF constraints. Over all, this empirically rich domain of investigation has led me to side with some prominent morphologists (e.g. S. Anderson, G. Stump, A. Spencer) and adopt a realizational view of morphology. Morphology is a set of well-formedness constraints at the syntax-phonology interface, each describing some modification of an existing lexical item that relates it to other forms. To some extent, this work grew out of my own earlier work on secondary predication and agreement in French, conducted within the more traditional (i.e., syntactic) perspective on inflectional categories, which proved to be less than satisfactory [refs].

I have also reexamined the alleged evidence that clitic pronouns are controlled by syntactic principles and argued that their syntactic behavior reduces to the fact that they are agreement markers in an agreement relation with a syntactic category, whether that relation is overt (clitic doubling) or not. Clitic climbing, on the other hand, is only a subcase of a larger phenomenon of syntactic domain extension and alignment of functional features with main clause Tense [refs].

On-going work explores the variation in subject clitic doubling across different registers of a single language, French, as well as across languages. This is part of a large typological study of clitic systems and an attempt to characterize the formal nature of intra- vs. cross-linguistic variation.

What is the status of information structure (discourse) in the grammar, and how does it relate to ‘optionality’?

Many word order effects are tied to discourse factors (e.g., focus) and OT provides a straightforward way to formalize the syntax-discourse relation. In my recent work on Stylistic Inversion in French wh-questions (Où est allé Jean? ‘where did John go?’) I have proposed that the postverbal position of the subject is a consequence of its discourse status: +identifiable, -active [refs]. In particular, I have argued that the traditional discourse status notions of focus and topic, must be replaced by these finer-grained features specified in the input to optimization.

Discourse factors and faithfulness to discourse features in the input are relevant to masking verb-second phenomena as well, as shown in my study of Breton and Basque [refs]. In fact, discourse factors, all too often overlooked by theoretical syntacticians, have been crucial to my theory of variation in OT syntax since the very first work on voice alternations in 1993 [refs].

Can the development and variability of early syntax be precisely accounted for via the same principles governing adult syntax?

OT encompasses a comprehensive formal theory of constraint interaction as well as an explicit theory of learning (Tesar and Smolensky, 1998). Given knowledge of grammar, the task of the learner in OT is to determine the constraint ranking which singles out the target language from the space of possible languages. In 1997, I started a collaborative project in first-language acquisition of syntactic structure with a student of mine and a visiting researcher, Anne Vainikka, in order to test the hypothesis that this process occurs over time via re-ranking of universal constraints. This work focuses on the very early development of inflection and related properties in a number of languages (roughly between the ages of 1½ and 2½ years of age). The first step in this project, funded by an NSF grant (Learning and Intelligent Systems), was a methodological one: the design of a cross-linguistically valid, independent measure of different stages of development in syntactic production which avoids the problems that come from lumping together several stages of development. The measure, presented in [refs], is called the Predominant Length of Utterance (to highlight its relation with another, morpheme-based, measure commonly used in developmental studies but not particularly useful in syntactic acquisition, Brown’s Mean Length of Utterance).

Armed with our new measure of developmental stages, and focusing initially on child French, we set out to explain, among other things, two empirical generalizations we uncovered in the development of tense and agreement. One is that (at least in French) acquisition of tense suffers a dip as agreement emerges. We propose that tense and agreement compete for realization in a single, underspecified, functional projection at the relevant stage. The other novel observation is that the relative distribution of finite and non-finite verbal forms through the course of the ‘optional infinitive stage’ (Wexler, 1994) is not as random as this global characterization would lead us to expect. At every fine-grained stage of development, the relative distribution of finite and non-finite verbal forms can, in fact, be quantified and correlated with other grammatical properties, revealing a pattern which is not one of unrestricted optionality. Previous formal models of acquisition shed no light on the frequency with which non-finite forms are used; nor do they provide any obvious means by which to express, let alone explain, the observed percentages and correlations.

Our OT theory of variation in child syntactic production [refs] posits a developing partial ordering of faithfulness constraints with respect to a fixed hierarchy of markedness constraints. (Partial orderings of violable constraints have previously been used to explain variation in phonology). The partial order is formally a set of rankings, where each yields a potentially different output. The proportion of each output type in the set predicts the proportions of attested forms in the production data. Other striking properties of child French that distinguish it from adult French, the occurrence of null subjects and postverbal subjects, are also subsumed under a general analysis of child French [refs]. Subsequent work will address the development of inflection in morphologically-rich languages. With the help of native speakers drawn from our graduate and undergraduate population, we have, in fact, started the analysis of relevant production data in Catalan, Hungarian, and Polish. Experimental work on syntactic perception is also planned to empirically explore general OT proposals concerning the relation between child production and perception.

Books

1. Smolensky, P. and G. Legendre. In progress. The Harmonic Mind (Anticipated date of completion: Fall 2002)

2. Legendre, G., J. Grimshaw, & S. Vikner (eds.). 2001. Optimality-theoretic Syntax. MIT Press

3. Legendre, G. 1994. Topics in French Syntax. Garland Publishing Co., New York. 328 pages.  

   Articles

4. Hale, J. and G. Legendre. In progress. Minimal Links, Remnant Movement, and (Non)-derivational Grammar.

5. Legendre, G, A. Vainikka, P. Hagstrom, and M. Todorova. 2002/Under review. Partial Constraint Ordering in Child French Syntax.

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6. Legendre, G. and A. Sorace. To appear. Split Intransitivity in French: An Optimality-theoretic Perspective. In Danièle Godard (ed.) Les langues romanes: problèmes de la phrase simple. Paris: CNRS éditions.

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7. Hagstrom, P., J. Chen-Main, G. Legendre, and L. Tao. In press. Default ne in Child Mandarin Chinese. Korean Journal of Cognitive Science, Seoul, Korea.

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8. Davidson, L. and G. Legendre. In press. Defaults and Competition in the Acquisition of Functional Categories in Catalan and French, in Rafael Nuñez-Cedeño, Luis López & Richard Cameron, (eds.), Selected Papers from the 2001 Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL XXVI).

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9. Legendre, G. In press. Optimality Theory in Syntax. In W. Frawley (Editor in Chief). International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (Second Edition). Oxford University Press.

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10. Legendre, G. In press. What are Clitics? Evidence from Balkan Languages. Phonological Studies (Journal of the Phonological Society of Japan).

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11. Legendre, G, P. Hagstrom, L. Tao, J. Chen, and L. Davidson. 2001. A Preliminary Look at the Acquisition of Aspect in Mandarin Chinese in OT. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Cognitive Science. L. Chen and Y. Zhuo, (eds.), Press of University of Science and Technology of China. 398-405.

12. Legendre, G. 2001. Introduction to OT syntax. In G. Legendre, S. Vikner, and J. Grimshaw, (eds.), OT Syntax. MIT Press. 1-27.

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13. Legendre, G. 2001. Masked V2 Effects and the Linearization of Functional Features. In G. Legendre, S. Vikner, and J. Grimshaw, (eds.), OT Syntax. MIT Press. 241-277.

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14. Legendre, G, P. Hagstrom, A. Vainikka, and M. Todorova. 2000. Evidence for syntactic competition in the acquisition if tense and agreement in child French. In A. Okrent and J. P. Boyle (eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Chicago Linguistics Society Meeting, 431-443.

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15. Legendre, G, P. Hagstrom, A. Vainikka, and M. Todorova. 2000. An OT model of Acquisition of Tense and Agreement in French. In L. Gleitman and A. Joshi (eds.) Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Pages?

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16. Legendre, G. 2000. For an OT Conception of a Parallel Interface: Evidence from Basque V2. In M. Hirotani, A. Coetzee, N. Hall, and J.-Y. Kim (eds.). Proceedings of the 30th Conference of the North East Linguistic Society. GLSA Publications. Pages?

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17. Legendre, G. 2000. Positioning Romanian Verbal Clitics at PF: An Optimality-Theoretic Analysis. In B. Gerlach and J. Grijzenhout, (eds.). Clitics from Different Perspectives. Johns Benjamins. 219-254.

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18. Legendre, G. 2000. Morphological and Prosodic Alignment of Bulgarian Clitics. In J. Dekkers, F. van der Leeuw, and J. van de Weijer, (eds.). Optimality Theory: Syntax, Phonology, and Acquisition. Oxford University Press. 423-462.

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19. Legendre,G. 2000. Optimal Romanian Clitics: A Cross-linguistic Perspective. In V. Motapanyane, (ed.), Comparative Studies in Romanian Syntax. Oxford: Elsevier, North Holland Linguistic Series 58. 227-264.

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20. Legendre, G. 1999. On the Status and Positioning of Verbal Clitics. JHU manuscript.

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21. Legendre, G. 1999. Why French Stylistic Inversion is Optimal. JHU manuscript.

22. Legendre, G. 1999. Morphological and Prosodic Alignment at Work: The Case of South-Slavic Clitics. In S.J. Blake, E.-S. Kim, and K.N. Shahin, (eds.). Proceedings of WCCFL XVII. CSLI Publications, Stanford University. 436-450.

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23. Legendre, G. 1998. Second Position Clitics in a V2 Language: Conflict Resolution in Macedonian. In J. Austin and A. Lawson, (eds.). Proceedings of the 1997 ESCOL Meeting. CLC Publications, Cornell University. 139-149.

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24. Legendre, G., P. Smolensky, and C. Wilson. 1998. When is Less More? Faithfulness and Minimal Links in Wh-Chains. In Is the Best Good Enough? Optimality and Competition in Syntax (P. Barbosa, D. Fox, P. Hagstrom, M. McGinnis, and D. Pesetsky, eds). MIT Press. 249-289.
25. Legendre, G. 1997. Secondary Predication and Functional Projections in French. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 15.1.1-45.

26. Legendre, G, C. Wilson, P. Smolensky, K. Homer, and W. Raymond. 1995. Optimality and Wh-Extraction. In Papers in Optimality Theory (J. Beckman, L. Walsh Dickey, and S. Urbanczyk, eds.) University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers 18. GLSA, UMass, Amherst, 607-636

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27. Legendre, G. 1995. Causee Prominence Constraints in French and Elsewhere. Grammatical Relations: Theoretical Approaches to Empirical Questions (C.S. Burgess, K. Dziwirek, and D. Gerdts, eds.). CSLI Publications, Stanford University. 291-308.
28. Legendre, G. 1994. Antipassive with French Psych Verbs. Proceedings of WCCFL XII (E. Duncan, D. Farkas, and P. Spaelti, eds.). CSLI Publications, Stanford University, Stanford University. 373-388.
29. Legendre, G. and T. Akimova. 1994. Inversion and Antipassive in Russian. Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics: The MIT Meeting, (S. Avrutin, S. Franks, and L. Progovac, eds.). Michigan Slavic Publications, 286-318.
30. Legendre, G. 1993. Review of Postal (1989): Masked Inversion in French. Romance Philology, Vol. XL VII, No.1, 79-83.

31. Legendre, G, W. Raymond and P. Smolensky. 1993. Analytic Typology of Case Marking and Grammatical Voice Based on Hierarchies of Universal Constraints. Proceedings of the 19th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 464-478.

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32. Miyata, Y., P. Smolensky, and G. Legendre. 1993. Distributed Representation and Parallel Processing of Recursive Structures. Proceedings of the 15th Cognitive Science Meeting, 759-764.
33. Smolensky, P., Legendre, G., & Miyata, Y. 1993. Integrating connectionist and symbolic computation for the theory of language. Current Science, 64:381-391. Also in V. Honavar & L. Uhr, Symbol Processors and Connectionist Networks in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Modeling: Steps Toward Principled Integration, Academic Press.
34. Legendre, G. & Rood, D. 1992. On the Interaction of Grammar Components in Lakhóta: Evidence from Split Intransitivity. Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, University of California, Berkeley, 380-394.
35. Legendre, G., Y. Miyata, and P. Smolensky. 1991. Integrating Semantic and Syntactic Accounts of Unaccusativity: A Connectionist Approach. Proceedings of the 17th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, University of California, Berkeley, 156-167.
36. Legendre, G., Y. Miyata, and P. Smolensky. 1991. Distributed Recursive Structure Processing. In Neural Information Processing 3,( D. Touretzky and J. Moody, eds.). Morgan Kaufmann, 591-597. (Longer version in the Proceedings of the 1991 Scandinavian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, (B. Mayoh, ed.). Amsterdam: IOS Press.
37. Legendre, G., Y. Miyata, and P. Smolensky. 1991. Representation and Processing of Tree Structures by Recursive Tensor Product Network. Proceedings of the Japanese Neural Network Society, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1-3.
38. Legendre, G., Y. Miyata, and P. Smolensky. 1990. Can Connectionism Contribute to Syntax? Harmonic Grammar, with an Application. Proceedings of the 26th Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society.
39. Legendre, G. 1990. French Causatives: Another Look at faire par. In Grammatical Relations: A Cross Theoretical Perspective ( K. Dziwirek, P. Farrell, and E. Mejias-Bikandi, eds.) CSLI Publications, Stanford University, 247-262.
40. Legendre, G. 1990. French Impersonal Constructions. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8:1, 81-128.
41. Legendre, G., Y. Miyata, and P. Smolensky. 1990. Harmonic Grammar C A Formal Multi-Level Connectionist Theory of Linguistic Well-Formedness: An Application. Proceedings of the Twelfth Cognitive Science Meeting. 884-891.
42. Legendre, G., Y. Miyata, and P. Smolensky. 1990. Harmonic Grammar C A Formal Multi-Level Connectionist Theory of Linguistic Well-Formedness: Theoretical Foundations. Proceedings of the Twelfth Cognitive Science Meeting. 388-395.
43. Legendre, G. 1989. Inversion with Certain French Experiencer Verbs. Language 65:4, 752-782.
44. Legendre, G. 1989. Unaccusativity in French. Lingua 79, 95-164.
45. Legendre, G. 1988. Two Classes of Unergatives in French? Proceedings of the 24th Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. 259-274.
46. Legendre, G. 1988. On the Issue of Multiple Syntactic Levels: Evidence from French Control. Proceedings of the 1988 Eastern States Conference on Linguistics, 301-312.
47. Legendre, G. 1988. Review of Postal (1986) Studies of Passive Clauses. Le Français Moderne 56, 1/2, 113-119, Brussels. Invited.
48. Legendre, G. 1986. Object Raising in French: A Unified Account. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 4: 137-184.
49. Legendre, G. 1985. Object to Subject Raising, Reflexive Passive and 3 to 2 Advancement in French. Linguistics Notes from La Jolla 13: 69-95.

50. Legendre, G. 1984. Tocharian Vowels: A New Historical Perspective. Linguistics Notes from La Jolla 12: 72-104.

    Technical Reports

51. Legendre, G, A. Vainikka, P. Hagstrom, and M. Todorova. 2002/Under review. Partial Constraint Ordering in Child French Syntax. Technical Report: JHU-CogSci-99-11. [Abridged and updated 2002 version under review].

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52. Vainikka, A., G. Legendre, and M. Todorova. 1999. PLU Stages: An Independent Measure of Early Syntactic Development. Technical Report: JHU-CogSci-99-10.

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53. Legendre, G. 1997. Optimal Romanian Clitics: A Cross-linguistic Perspective. Technical Report JHU-CogSci-97-9. [Revised as publication #19]
54. Legendre, G. 1997. Optimal Clitics and Verb Movement in Romanian. Technical Report JHU-CogSci-97-7.

55. Legendre, G. 1996. Clitics, Verb(Non)-Movement, and Optimality in Bulgarian. Technical Report JHU-CogSci-96-5. [Revised as publication #18]

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56. Legendre, G. 1992. Split Intransitivity: A Reply to Van Valin (1990). Technical Report ICS-TR-92-3/Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Colorado at Boulder.
57. Smolensky, P., Legendre, G., & Miyata, Y. 1992. Principles for an Integrated Connectionist/Symbolic Theory of Higher Cognition. Technical Report CU-CS-600-92/Department of Computer Science and 92-8/Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Colorado at Boulder. [Integrated to forthcoming book #1]

050.140 The World of Language
050.320 Introduction to the Syntax of Natural Languages
050.321 Syntactic Theory and Analysis
050.427 Topics in the History of the Romance Languages
050.620 Introduction to the Syntax of Natural Languages
050.621 Syntactic Theory and Analysis
050.822 Research Seminar in Syntax
050.825 Research Seminar in Optimality Theory

e-mail: legendre@cogsci.jhu.edu
Phone: (410) 516-4838
Office: 249 Krieger Hall

Office hours: To Be Announced

Mailing address:
	Department of Cognitive Science Johns Hopkins University 237 Krieger Hall 3400 N. Charles St. Baltimore, MD 21218-2685, U.S.A