Education 

PhD in Linguistics, Cornell University, 1985
MA in East Asian Literature (Chinese), Cornell University, 1981
BA in East Asian Studies (Chinese) and Spanish and Latin American Studies (literature), The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1978

Specialization 

Syntax
Semantics
Political Linguistics
General Linguistics

Courses

Introduction to Language Sciences
Language Conflict and Language Rights
Language and Humor
Mathematical Linguistics
Introduction to Syntax
Introduction to Morphology
Syntactic Theory
The Evolution of Linguistic Theory, Practice, and Methods

Research Projects 

My primary area of research is syntactic theory and the syntax-semantics interface. I have produced four books, four edited volumes, and over one hundred articles and book chapters on a variety of topics – largely on the syntax and semantics of various languages, including English, Japanese, Korean, Bulgarian, Hebrew, and two Bantu languages (Chichewa and Lingala). My 2004 Blackwell book, co-authored with William D. Davies, is titled The Grammar of Raising and Control: A Course in Syntactic Argumentation, and was followed in 2007 by an edited collection with Springer, New Horizons in the Analysis of Control and Raising. My three most recent co-authored and co-edited books are  Language Conflict and Language Rights: Ethnolinguistic Perspectives on Human Conflict (2018, Cambridge University Press), Understanding Language through Humor, 2^nd edition (2026, Cambridge University Press), and the Cambridge Handbook of Language and Political Conflict (co-edited with M. Gavin and H. Starr, 2026, Cambridge University Press). I am currently engaged in two digital projects. One with Michael Gavin and Harvey Starr is called the Language Conflict Project [https://www.languageconflict.org/] and seeks to analyze through measures of Linguistic Distance and a Language Freedom Index, the role of language in intrastate ethnolinguistic political conflict. The other is called the Wordification^TM Project [https://wordification.scholastechnology.com/] and is developing an online dialect-informed, instructional spelling application designed to improve English spelling ability and advance literacy, with a particular focus on students who are speakers of Non-Mainstream American English.

Publications 

BOOKS

• 2026 (to appear, edited with Michael Gavin and Harvey Starr). The Cambridge handbook of language and political conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• 2026 Understanding language through humor, 2^nd  Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• 2018 (with William Davies). Language conflict and language rights: Ethnolinguistic perspectives on human conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• 2015 (edited with Harvey Starr). The Israeli conflict system: Analytic approaches.  London: Routledge.
• 2011 (with Christopher Holcomb). Understanding language through humor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• 2007 (edited with William Davies). New horizons in the analysis of Control and Raising. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 71.  Dordrecht: Springer.
• 2004 (with William Davies). The grammar of Raising and Control: A course in syntactic argumentation.  Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
• 2001 (with William Davies).  Objects and other subjects: Grammatical functions, functional categories, and configurationality. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 52.  Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press. 

PUBLICATIONS (LAST 5 YEARS)

2026

• (with Frances Blanchette, Rok Sim, and Amanda Harman). This construction needs understood: An experimental study of the Alternative Embedded Passive (AEP). American Speech 101(1): 20-50.
• (to appear, with Michael Gavin and Harvey Starr). Heritage languages in the context of language conflict. Heritage Language Journal
• (to appear, with Michael Gavin and A. J. Murphy). Understanding linguistic difference: Key concepts for the study of language conflict. In Stanley Dubinsky, Michael Gavin, and Harvey Starr (eds.), Handbook of language and political conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• (to appear, with Michael Gavin, A. J. Murphy, and Harvey Starr). Linguistic and territorial Integrity in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. In Stanley Dubinsky, Michael Gavin, and Harvey Starr (eds.), Handbook of language and political conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2025

• Foundations of justice: From Genesis to the Declaration of Independence. Letters to America. Shuddhashar (শুদ্ধস্বর) FreeVoice Magazine. June 2025.
• Finding ‘language’ in the Hebrew Bible. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 10(1): 5877.
• (with Michael Gavin, Gareth Rees-White, Shana Scucchi, and Harvey Starr). The Language Freedom Index: A metric for policy evaluation. Language (Language and Public Policy section) 101(2): e84-e108.
• (with Michael Gavin & Harvey Starr). Language conflict studies: The emergence of linguistic political science. In Jeroen Darquennes, Joe Salmons, & Wim Vandenbussche (eds.), Language contact: An international handbook, Volume 2, chapter 54, 829-847. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
• (with Keunhyung Park). Negative polar questions in English and Korean: Interactions of frequency, structural complexity, and interpretation. In Frances Blanchette & Cynthia Lukyanenko (eds.), Perspectives on negation: Views from across the language sciences, 1178-146. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

2024

• History of linguistics as a path to dissertation progress and contextualization of research. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America. Special Issue: Teaching History of Linguistics in the 21^st Century 9(2): 5741.
• (with Rabbi Meir Muller). The Jewish moral covenant: A bond stronger than blood. Shuddhashar (শুদ্ধস্বর) FreeVoice Magazine. Issue 40, Blood. August 2024.
• (with Rok Sim). Two classes of ‘anyone’: A contrastive analysis of amwu-to and nwukwu-to in Korean. Proceedings of the 47^th Annual Penn Linguistics Conference. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 30: 147-155. 
• (with Lexington Whalen, Dalton Craven, Shashank Comandur, Nathan Bickel, and Homayoun Valafar). Wordification: A new way of teaching English spelling patterns. 2023 Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, & Applied Computing (CSCE 2023): 1151-1158. IEEE

2023

• (with Anyssa Murphy). Classical Greek object cases: A corpus-driven analysis of their distribution. Journal of Greek Linguistics 23(1): 97-126.
• (with Rabbi Hesh Epstein). How Hebrew kept us a people. Tablet Magazine (tabletmag.com). May 19, 2023.
• (with Rabbi Hesh Epstein). When God cries: Why the mysterious sound we heard at Sinai is a haunting reminder of divine love. Tablet Magazine (tabletmag.com). February 10, 2023.
• (with Keunhyung Park). L2 interpretation of Negative Polar Questions (NPQs): Evidence from on-line experiments. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 8(1). Washington DC: LSA.
• (with Anyssa Murphy, Lex Whalen, Michael Gavin, John Bailyn, and Jackson Ginn). On “historical unity” of Russian and Ukrainian: A linguistic perspective on language conflict and change. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 8(1). Washington DC: LSA.  

2022

• (with Angelina Rubina). Morpho-syntactic, contextual, and lexical determinants of non-referentiality in Russian. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 30(1): 109-144.
• (with Harvey Starr). Weaponizing language: Linguistic vectors of ethnic oppression. Special issue: Cruelty and Global Politics. Global Studies Quarterly 2(2): ksab051.
• (with Michael Gavin, AJ Murphy, and Harvey Starr). Conflicts over language stretch far beyond Russia and Ukraine. The Conversation: Politics and Society. May 23, 2022.
• (with Rabbi Hesh Epstein). A tale of two Totafot: On the mysterious and much debated origins of a seminal Biblical term. Tablet Magazine (tabletmag.com). January 7, 2022.
• (with Jiyeon Song and So Young Lee). Event- and type-plurality of the anti-quantifier -ssik in Korean. 2022 Linearization: Proceedings of the 24th Seoul International Conference on Generative Grammar (SICOGG 24): 166-175. Seoul, Korea: Korea National Open University (KNOU).
• (with Keunhyung Park). Subjacency effects on overt wh-movement in wh-in-situ languages: Evidence for nominal structure. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 7(1): 5222. Washington DC: LSA.