I am both a fieldworker in a traditional sense and a theoretical linguist.

As fieldworker, I enjoy working on un(der)described languages from the ground up, constructing detailed descriptions of languages of different origins, comparing languages, doing language documentation, building databases. It is also important to me to make data accessible particularly to native speakers, and to train native speaker to become linguists as their language in all its nuances and intricacies is an important of their cultural heritage, and the privileged access to their language native speakers have will allow ever deeper and refined understanding of this wondrous human attribute.

I am also a contemporary theoretical linguist attempting to formulate general abstract principles human grammars obey. I try to uncover the invariant properties of human languages, in order to figure out the design specifications underlying all human languages. Inspired by the remarkable theoretical developments of the last half century, I take it that one of the core research challenges linguists face is to reconcile the apparent ease with which children acquire their native language with its extraordinarily rich, complex and subtle properties – suggesting a rich array of common abstract specifications - with the apparent diversity of human languages, suggesting a lack of such common specifications.

Over the course of my career, my theoretical contributions have largely been based on original fieldwork on previously un(der)described or understudied languages, mostly African languages from various families, and more recently also Austronesian or Polynesian languages. I have also worked extensively on better described languages such as Dutch, French, English, Hungarian, Korean, Japanese or Chinese.

My descriptive and theoretical interests are not just parallel. Rather the two aspects closely interact in my research: I bring data from typologically diverse languages to bear on issues of a highly theoretical nature. Conversely, I apply abstract and complex theoretical concepts to the analysis of these languages.

Concretely, I formulate hypotheses about the abstract specifications of the (constantly evolving) general model of language structure by applying this model to very different conditions in the field, i.e. by approaching fieldwork on human languages from a theoretical angle, and by trying to figure out what we can learn about the specifications of the theoretical model from the syntax of individual languages or from their syntactic comparisons. I enjoy the challenge of creating order in large portions of complex unanalyzed data. I seek to achieve this goal parsimoniously, by combining a few independently motivated theoretical principles with specific detailed analyses, often, by necessity, challenging explicitly or implicitly established assumptions.

Recent Articles

On Dutch allemaal and West Ulster all. in J. Wouter Zwart and Marc de Vries (ed.) Structure Preserved Benjamins Publications. p.267-275. 2010. http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/001139

The Dutch PP to appear in G. Cinque and Luigi Rizzi (eds) The cartography of PPs. Oxford University Press. Click here

Verbal complexes and complex verbs: a single computational engine. Prepublication of the 12th International Symposium on Chinese Language and Linguistics. Taipei, June 2010.

On restricting recursion and the form of syntactic representations. to appear in P. Speas and Tom Roeper (ed) Recursion, Oxford University Press. (April 2010). http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/001138

Samoan ergatives as double passives, to appear in L.Brugé, A. Cardinaletti, G Giusti, N. Monera, and C. Poletto (eds), Functional Heads, Oxford University Press. (2008)

http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/000768

With Dominique Sportiche “The que/qui alternation: new analytical directions” to appear in Peter Svenonius (ed) Functional Structure From Top to Toe. Oxford University Press. http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/000638

2007. Topics in imperatives, in Wim van der Wurff, Imperative clauses in Generative grammar, Studies in Honor of Frits Beukema, Linguistic Actuell/Linguistics Today 103. John Benjamins. click here

2006. Agreement: in defense of the “Spec head configuration”. in C. Boeckx (ed) agreement systems. John Benjamins For a version of this paper click here

2006 “When to pied-pipe and when to strand in San Dionicio Octotepec Zapotec” in Hans Broekhuis et al., Organizing Grammar. Mouton de Gruyter.

2005 Malagasy Imperatives http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/faciliti/wpl/issues/wpl12/papers/Koopman_AFLA12.pdf

2005. “On the parallelism of DPs and clauses in Kisongo Maasai”. In Carnie, Andrew, Sheila Dooley, and Heidi Harley (2005) Verb First. John Benjamins Philadelphia:. For a version of this paper click here

2004. “Agreement-lite”. A short summary of judgment patterns of 17 speakers for plural agreement in English there-insertion constructions, depending on interveners. Click here

2005. Korean and Japanese morphology from a syntactic perspective: a reply to Sells. appeared in LI (2005). Click here

Inside the Noun in Maasai, in Anoop Mahajan (ed) Syntax at Sunset 3, http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/faciliti/wpl/issues/wpl10.htm Click here for a pdf file.

2002. Derivations and complexity filters. To download an earlier version, click here

1997 This paper was supposed to appear in a volume that never materialized. It is an attempt to apply the doubly filled filter and the principle of projection activation to historical data from English. I would love to have feedback on this paper. The paper focuses on elements that disappear and syntactic consequences digs.pdf

1997 This paper deals with predicate cleft in Vata and Nweh. (click here) An idea about how to approach language variation in an antisymmetric framework where everything moves overtly, pied-piping is the norm, and underlying hierarchies are universal. Also in the 2000 book)

1996 The Spec Head configuration. Also published in Koopman (2000) For a version click here

Books

2000, with Anna Szabolcsi Verbal complexes . Current series in Linguistic Theory. MIT Press.

2000 The Syntax of Specifiers and Heads. Leading Linguist Series. Routledge. For ordering information click here

1984 The Syntax of Verbs: from Verb Movement rules in the Kru Languages to Universal Grammar, Foris Publications. (out of print for a pdf copy click here )

Edited books:

1983. Current Approaches to African Linguistics, with J. Kaye, D. Sportiche and A.Dugas (eds), Foris Publications, Dordrecht.

Textbooks:

Coauthor of V. Fromkin (2000) Linguistics. Blackwell (responsible for Chapter 5)

With Dominique Sportiche and Ed Stabler. Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory (ISAT). (under publication contract).

Teaching

Undergraduate

· Intro to Linguistic Theory (Ling 20)

· Syntax I (120B)

· Syntax II (165b)

· Survey of African Languages.

· Undergraduate Field Methods

Graduate

· Syntax 1 (2 and 3)

· Field methods 1 and 2

· Structure of Language X

· Research Seminars

African Linguistics School

ALS 2009. In the summer of 2009, there was a two week school hosted by NYU in Ghana that focused on the study of African languages and linguistic theory. One of the biggest challenges most African countries face is the maintenance and management of linguistic diversity. In order to meet these challenges, it is necessary to have access to advanced linguistic tools. This school aimed at offering African students the possibility of becoming familiar with new advances in linguistic description and theory. 70 African students participated! The school was held in Accra, Ghana and centered around four major linguistic domains: Syntax (I taught syntax 2), Phonology, Semantics, and Language Contact. The school was a resounding success and just a wonderful experience.

The African Linguistics School 2011. will be held at Institut de Développement et d’Echanges Endogènes (IDEE) http://www.idee-benin.com in Ouidah (Rep. of Benin), approximately at 40km away form Cotonou.

Tools for comparative syntax:

Syntactic Structure of the World’s Languages

SSWL is a searchable database that allows users to discover which properties (morphological, syntactic, and semantic) characterize a language, as well as how these properties relate across languages. This system is designed to be free to the public and open-ended. Anyone can use the database to perform queries.

Current search functions are very powerful!

This is a great project that will serve the community as a whole. Check it out and get involved!

I am actively participating in the development of this database and other potential applications of the database technology. I have entered properties for the following languages:

Syntactic properties of Dutch in the Syntactic Structures of the World’s Languages database.

Syntactic properties of Vata in the Syntactic Structures of the World’s Languages database.

Syntactic properties of Tongan in the Syntactic Structures of the World’s Languages database.

Syntactic properties of Maasai in the Syntactic Structures of the World’s languages database.