Consulting Professor of Linguistics, Stanford University Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, Ohio
State University
[Last revised 1/22/13]
Research areas
Syntactic
theory: Construction-based syntax Syntactic variation The advice literature on
grammar, usage, and style Morphological theory:
Lexeme-based, realizational morphology Theory of grammar:
Interfaces between phonology, morphology, and syntax
Current research program
I'm investigating the interrelationships of syntax, morphology,
and phonology, focusing especially on apparent counterexamples
to the Principle of Phonology-Free Syntax and the Principle of
Morphology-Free Syntax, as well as phenomena (like clitics) that
appear to fall within more than one component of grammar.
I'm also doing research on the conceptual foundations of
morphology, as well as developing a construction-based framework
for syntax and a "realizational" framework for morphology.
More recently (well, since around 1980), I've been
investigating syntactic variation, paying attention to small
details that mostly don't map easily to large-scale social
distinctions like region, sex, class, ethnicity, and so on. As
an offshoot of this research, I've also become interested in the
"advice literature" on English syntax, and more generally, on
material about usage and prescriptivism; and I've returned to
earlier interests in style and in mistakes in language.
In addition, for some years I've done research and writing on
language, gender, and sexuality.
Arnold Zwicky
& Nancy Levin, "You don’t
have tó" (Linguistic Inquiry,
1980).
Arnold Zwicky & Robert Kantor. "A survey of syntax" (Language Development, Grammar,
and Semantics: The Contributions of
Linguistics to Bilingual Education, Center for
Applied Linguistics, 1980).
Arnold Zwicky & Ann Zwicky on restaurant menus (American
Speech, 1981).
"Same but different", on
ways in which a single phonological stem can correspond to
material with different syntactic distributions, meanings, or
uses (Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, 1999).
An abstract of September 2003
for "Go look at the modern language to test hypotheses about the
past", about the history of the Quasi-Serial Verb construction
in English.
An abstract of May 2004 for
"The shock of the new: Evaluative adjectives are whack!".
An abstract of August 2006
for "Personal taste and editorial style: however vs. but (by AMZ
& Douglas W. Kenter).
An abstract of September 2006
for "Why are we so illuded?", on misperceptions about variation
in language.
An abstract of September 2006
for "Metavariation: Variation in advice on variation" (by Thomas
A. Grano & AMZ), on advice about choosing between the
determiners much and a lot of.
The handout for my 2000 BLS
talk (in the version presented later at Stanford) on "Describing
syncretism: Rules of referral after fifteen years".
The handout for a Stanford Syntax Workshop
in May 2000, "A-verb-in' we will go", on the syntax of
a-prefixing of verbs in various Southern varieties of English.
The handout for my 2001 SemFest
talk on "Counting Chad", on the count/mass distinction in
English, with special reference to chad, e-mail/email, and ice
plant.
The handout for my presentation
"Toni Morrison's genius puts her in the grammar/usage spotlight"
at the January 2005 meeting of the American Dialect Society.
The handout for my presentation
"How to name a porn star" at the January 2005 meeting of the
American Name Society.
The handout for my presentation
"Ideal types: peacocks, chameleons, and centaurs" at the March
2005 SemFest (on categorization in general, and categorization
of gay men in particular).
The handout for my presentation
"Gonna, Auxiliary Reduction, and two modules of syntactic
organization" at the 2005 Berkeley Linguistics Society meeting.
The handout for my 2010
SemFest talk, "Brevity plus" on morphological conversions
favoring semantic/pragmatic specificity and social specificity
as well as brevity.
(G.K. Pullum & A.M. Zwicky) A misconceived approach to
morphology. WCCFL 10.387-98
(1992).
Heads, bases, and functors. G.G. Corbett, N. Fraser, &
Scott McGlashan (eds.),Heads in grammatical
theory.Cambridge Univ. Press (1993)
292-315.
(P.H. Miller, G.K. Pullum, & A.M. Zwicky) Le principe
d'inaccesibilite de la phonologie par le syntaxe: trois
contre-exemples apparents en francais. Lingvisticae
Investigationes16.2.317-43 (1992).
Dealing out meaning: Fundamentals of syntactic constructions.BLS20.611-25 (1994).
(J.A. Nevis, B.D. Joseph, D. Wanner, & A.M. Zwicky)Clitics: A Comprehensive Bibliography, 1892-1991. John
Benjamins (1994).
Why English adverbial -ly
is not inflectional. CLS31.1.523-35
(1995).
Exceptional degree markers: A puzzle in internal and external
syntax.OSU WPL47.111-23 (1995).
(A.L. Halpern & A.M. Zwicky, eds.) Approaching
Second: Second position clitics and related phenomena.
CSLI Publications (1996).
Two lavender issues for linguists. K. Hall & A. Livia
(eds.),Queerly Phrased.
Oxford Univ. Press (1997) 21-34.
(P.H. Miller, G.K. Pullum, & A.M. Zwicky) The Principle of
Phonology-Free Syntax: Four apparent counterexamples in
French. JL33.67-90.
(A. Spencer & A.M. Zwicky, eds.)Handbook
of Morphology. Blackwell (1997).
(G.K. Pullum & A.M. Zwicky) Gerund participles and
head-complement inflection conditions. P. Collins & D.
Lee (eds.),The Clause in English.
Benjamins (1999) 251-71.
Same but different. University of Illinois Studies
in the Linguistic Sciences29.2.105-10
(1999).
I wonder what kind of construction that this example
illustrates. David Beaver, Luis D. Casillas Martinez,
Brady Z. Clark, & Stefan Kaufmann (eds.), The
Construction of Meaning. CSLI Publications (2002)
219-48.
The other F word. Out 115.82, 84, 140 (June
2003).
(John R. Rickford, Isabelle Buchstaller, Thomas Wasow, &
Arnold Zwicky) Intensive and quotative all: Something old,
something new. American Speech 82.1.3-31 (2007).
(Isabelle Buchstaller, John R. Rickford, Elizabeth Closs
Traugott, Thomas Wasow, & Arnold Zwicky). The
sociolinguistics of a short-lived innovation: Tracing the
development of quotative all across spoken and internet
newsgroup data. Language
Variation and Change (in press).
Recent and future courses
In 2004-05, at Stanford, I taught: Syntactic Variation
(125A/225A, graduate/undergraduate seminar, autumn quarter);
Advanced Introduction to Linguistics (201, graduate course,
winter quarter); Sophomore Research Seminar: Split Infinitives,
Prepositions at End, and Other Horrors (30Q, on prescriptive
grammar, spring quarter).
In 2005-06 I was a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center,
working on the "Adventures in the Advice Trade" project (see
.pdf link above), and taught one course: Seminar in
Morphosyntax: A Cabinet of Curiosities (218, graduate seminar,
autumn quarter).
In 2006-07 I taught: Seminar in Syntax: Choosing a Variant
(125/225, graduate/undergraduate seminar, autumn quarter);
Innovations: Variation and Change (157, undergraduate seminar,
winter quarter); Choosing a Variant: Unfree Variation (LSA 376,
course at the Linguistic Institute, summer quarter).
In 2007-08 I taught: Seminar in Phonology: The Phonology of
Syntax (112/212A, graduate/undergraduate seminar, autumn
quarter); Morphology (116, undergraduate introductory course,
winter quarter).
In 2009-10 I taught: Choosing a Variant (116/216,
graduate/undergraduate seminar, winter quarter).
Brief biography
I received an A.B. in mathematics from Princeton (1962) and a
Ph.D. in linguistics from MIT (1965). After teaching four years at
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, I came to Ohio State in 1969, was
named a Distinguished University Professor in 1989, and retired in
1995. Since 1985 I have been a visiting (now, consulting)
professor at Stanford
, and from September 1998 on I am based at Stanford. I have been
active in the Linguistic Society
of America (and was its president in 1992) and have taught
or worked on research projects at many of the Linguistic
Institutes of the LSA, from 1968 through 2007; I held the Sapir
Professorship at the 1999 Institute, at the University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. I am a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences (elected 1992); of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (elected 1998); and of the Association for
Psychological Science (elected 2007). I've held one-year
fellowships at the Center for
Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Stanford Humanities
Center, and shorter appointments at Edinburgh, Sussex, and
the Beijing Language Institute.
Links to other pages
I am a frequent contributor to Language Log, where lots
of interesting linguists muse about things having to do with
language; to the American
Dialect Society mailing list; and to Chris Waigl's eggcorn database. And I
have blog of my own,
mostly on linguistic topics. And another, mostly XXX-rated blog here.
I am the founder of the OUTIL (OUT In Linguistics) mailing list,
for lgbt(-friendly) linguists; this now functions as a Facebook
group OUT In Linguistics. For an extensive bibliography on gay and
lesbian language, see the compilation
by Gregory Ward. And for links to just about anything of lgb
relevance, check out the QRD
(Queer Resources Directory). I am also a long-time participant in
the Usenet newsgroup soc.motss (Members Of The Same Sex); the most
recent faq
file for soc.motss has all sorts of useful information about
the newsgroup. (The soc.motss archives also include an
anthology of my postings about life with my partner, Jacques
Transue, during the last 12 years of his life.) And, if that isn't
enough, for several years I was a board member of NOGLSTP (the National
Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical
Professionals).
I have been an enthusiastic singer in the Sacred Harp (Denson
Book) shape-note singing tradition since 1989; I sing with groups
in Palo Alto, San Francisco, and Columbus. All sorts of
information about shape-note singing can be found on the FASOLA homepage.
A collection of my academic "postcard collages" is available here.
(Some explanation of these collages can be found here.)
Two further collages, in honor of colleagues, are available here.
Syntactic
theory: Construction-based syntax