Geraldine Legendre | JHU Cognitive Science Department

Department of
Cognitive Science

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Geraldine Legendre Professor Director of Graduate Admissions		Geraldine Legendre

			Research Interests
			Language Acquisition Lab
			Selected Publications
			Courses
			Supervision of Student Research (2000-)
			Education & Experience
			Contact Information
			Curriculum Vitae

	legendre@cogsci.jhu.edu Phone: 6-4838 Office: Krieger 249
	legendre@cogsci.jhu.edu Phone: 6-4838 Office: Krieger 249

Research Interests

Theoretical linguistics, in particular
	Syntax, role of optimization in syntax
	Architecture of the grammar
	Interfaces between syntax, morphology, and phonology
	Cross-linguistic variation in syntax and morphology (e.g. Romance, Balkan languages)

Acquisition of early (morpho)syntax, in particular
	Functional categories (tense, aspect, agreement)
	Role of optimization in the process of acquisition
	Stages of development
	Relation between early comprehension and production .

General cognitive architecture underlying the language faculty

Selected Publications

Books

Smolensky, P. and G. Legendre. 2006. The Harmonic Mind. MIT Press. 2 volumes.

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

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

Articles

Lopez-Gonzalez, M. and G. Legendre. 2007. Acquiring the Spanish copulae ser and estar: evidence for sensitivity to semantic cues from spontaneous production. Submitted.

Legendre, G. 2007. A Formal Typology of Person-Based Auxiliary Selection in Italo-Romance. Submitted.

Legendre, G. & A. Sorace 2007/to appear. Auxiliaries and Intransitivity in French and in Romance. In D. Godard (ed.) The Romance languages.

Legendre, G and P. Smolensky. 2007/to appear. French Inchoatives and Bi-directional Optimality Theory. In

D. Gerdts, J. Moore, and M. Polinsky (eds.) Hypothesis A/Hypothesis B: Linguistic Explorations in Honor of David M. Perlmutter. MIT Press.

Legendre, G. 2007/in press. On the Typology of Auxiliary Selection. Lingua.

Legendre, G. 2006/in press. Optimizing Auxiliary Selection in Romance. In R. Aranovich (ed.) Split Auxiliary Systems: A Cross-linguistic Perspective. John Benjamins. 145-180.

Legendre, G., T. Nazzi, I. Barrière, Jennifer Culbertson, L. Goyet, M. Lopez-Gonzalez, and E. Zaroukian. 2006. Acquiring Subject-verb Agreement in French: Evidence for Abstract Knowledge from Comprehension. Proceedings of BUCLD 31, Boston.

Legendre, G. 2006. Early Child Grammars: Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Morphosyntactic Production. Cognitive Science 30:5, 803-835.

Legendre, G., P. Hagstrom, J. Chen-Main, L. Tao, and P. Smolensky. 2004. Deriving Output Probabilities in Child Mandarin from a Dual-Optimization Grammar. Lingua, Vol. 114/9-10, 1147-1185.

Hale, J. and G. Legendre. 2004. Minimal Links, Remnant Movement, and (Non)-derivational Grammar. In Arthur Stepanov, Gisbert Fanselow and Ralf Vogel (eds.), Minimality Effects in Syntax. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.177-204

Legendre, G. and A. Sorace. 2003. Mapping Lexical Semantics onto Syntactic Structure: The Problem of Unaccusative Matches in Romance Languages. Korean Journal of Cognitive Science. Vol. 4, 1:43-78.

Legendre, G. and A. Sorace. 2003. Auxiliaires et intransivité en français et dans les langues romanes. In Danièle Godard (ed.) Les langues romanes: problèmes de la phrase simple. Paris: CNRS éditions. 185-233.

Davidson, L. and G. Legendre. 2003. Defaults and Competition in the Acquisition of Functional Categories in Catalan and French. In Rafael Nuñez-Cedeño, Luis López & Richard Cameron, (eds.), A Romance Perspective on Language Knowledge and Use. 273-290.

Legendre, G. 2003. Optimality Theory in Syntax. In W. Frawley (Editor in Chief). International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (Second Edition). Oxford University Press.

Legendre, G. 2003. What are Clitics? Evidence from Balkan Languages. Phonological Studies (Journal of the Phonological Society of Japan). Vol. 6: 89-96.

Legendre, G, A. Vainikka, P. Hagstrom, and M. Todorova. 2002. Partial Constraint Ordering in Child French Syntax. Language Acquisition 10(3), 189-227.

Hagstrom, P., J. Chen-Main, G. Legendre, and L. Tao. 2002. Default ne in Child Mandarin Chinese. Korean Journal of Cognitive Science. 81-118.

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 3^rd International Conference on Cognitive Science. L. Chen and Y. Zhuo, (eds.), Press of University of Science and Technology of China. 398-405.

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

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.

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

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. 292-297.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Legendre, G. 1997. Secondary Predication and Functional Projections in French. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 15.1.1-45.

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.

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.

Courses

050.240 The World of Language (Introduction to Linguistics with Fieldwork)

050.227 Topics in the History of the Romance Languages (with L. Burzio)

050.320/620 Syntax I: GB

050.321/620 Syntax II: Introduction to OT Syntax

050.822 Research seminar in syntax

050.825 Research seminar in OT

050.827 Research seminar in acquisition

Supervision of Student Research (2000-)

Undergraduate:

Pasha Siraj (2000-2) The syntax of Singaporean English (Provost’s Undergraduate Research Award)

Hilary Knipe (2001-2) The Development of have and be in Latin

Jesse Mermelstein (2005-7) The syntax of code-switching: Yeshivish (Provost’s Undergraduate Research Award)

Erin Zaroukian (2007) The Acquisition of agreement in English (NSF REU)

Molly Schindler (2007) The syntax of Urban Wolof

Graduate:

Lisa Davidson (2000-1) Acquisition of tense and agreement in Catalan

John Hale (2000-1) OT syntax: representations vs. derivations

Adam Buchwald (2000-1) OT syntax: null objects

Tamara Nicol (2001-) Acquisition of implicit objects in English

Ehren Reilly (2003-5) OT syntax: Texistepec Popoluca clitics

Jennifer Culbertson (2006-) OT syntax: V2 in Old French; acquisition of dislocated arguments in French

Monica Lopez-Gonzalez (2006-) Distribution and acquisition of ser and estar in Spanish

Lilia Rissman (2007-) Acquisition of functional categories in English

Education & Experience

Ph.D., Linguistics, University of California - San Diego, 1987.
M.A. Linguistics, University of California - San Diego, 1984
Licence es Lettres (Anglais), Université de Tours, Trance, 1974

Academic Positions
Professor, Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University, 2000 present.
Visiting Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Paris at Nanterre, January & May 2004.
Visiting Scientist, Groupe Cognition & Developpement, Centre de la Recherche Scientifique, Université de Paris 5. Long-term collaborative project on the acquisition of French syntax by 2-year olds. (With Isabelle Barrière/Yeled V’Yalda Research Institute, NY and Thierry Nazzi/Université de Paris 5).
Visiting Scientist, Pioneer Project/Department of Linguistics, University of Nijmegen (The Netherlands), June-July 2002
Associate Professor, Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University, 1995 – 2000.
Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Colorado, 1994 -1995.
Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Colorado, 1987 -1994.

Contact Information

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

Office hours: By appointment

Mailing address:

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