Language Change, Variation, and Universals

Peter W. Culicover, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, Ohio State University

Peter W. Culicover is currently Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the Ohio State University. He previously held positions at the University of California, Irvine and the University of Arizona, where he was Head of the Department of Linguistics. His awards include the Distinguished Fulbright Chair in Theoretical Linguistics at the University of Venice and the Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. His research is concerned primarily with understanding and explaining the syntactic structure of human languages, and he has explored such topics as language learnability, computational modeling of language acquisition and language change, the grammar of focus, grammatical constructions, the grammar of contemporary English and the architecture of grammar. His many publications include the OUP volumes Simpler Syntax (with Ray Jackendoff, 2005), Natural Language Syntax (2009), Grammar and Complexity (2013), and Explaining Syntax (2013).

Part I: Foundations
1. Overview
2. Constructions
3. Universals
4. Learning, complexity, and competition
Part II: Variation
5. Argument structure
6. Grammatical functions
7. A' constructions
Part III: Change
8. Constructional change in Germanic
9. Changes outside of the CCore
10. Constructional economy and analogy
11. Recapitulation and prospects