Ph.D. (English Language and Linguistics), Indiana University 1971. Joined the faculty at Princeton in 1984; transferred to emeritus status as Professor of Linguistics in 2016. He continues to work on the theory of syntax, with an emphasis on the foundations of generative grammar and its evolution. He has published articles on bound anaphora, disjoint reference, case theory, and cyclicity. Several of these articles have been reprinted in Generative Grammar:  theory and its history (Routledge Leading Linguists series 2007), including "Conceptual Shifts in the Science of Grammar: 1951-1992" (in Noam Chomsky: critical assessments, Routledge 1994) and "Exquisite connections: some remarks on the evolution of generative grammar" (with Jean-Roger Vergnaud, in Lingua 2001). Other work on the history of generative grammar includes: 

"Some roots of the minimalist program" (with Howard Lasnik, in The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Minimalism, 2011).

"Noam Chomsky’s contribution to linguistics" (in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics, 2013).

"Chomsky’s linguistics:  goals of the generative enterprise" (in Language 2016).

"The Strong Minimalist Thesis" (in Philosophies 2021).

He is the author of Foundations of Generative Syntax (MIT Press, 1992), Syntax: basic concepts and applications (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and Adventures in English Syntax (Cambridge University Press, 2020). He is editor of Principles and Parameters in Comparative Grammar (MIT Press, 1991) and Current Issues in Comparative Grammar (Kluwer, 1995), Syntax: critical concepts (6 volumes, co-edited with Howard Lasnik, Routledge 2006), and Foundational Issues in Linguistic Theory: essays in honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud (co-edited with Carlos Otero and Maria Luisa Zubizarreta, M.I.T. Press 2008). He is currently series editor for Elements in Generative Syntax (Cambridge University Press).

Contact: [email protected]