Stan Dubinsky

Professor of Linguistics
Associate Dean, The Graduate School
Office:304 Byrnes Building
(803) 777-4243
dubinsky@sc.edu

Education

Ph.D., Cornell University, 1985

Current CV

Specialization Areas

• Linguistic theory
• Syntax
• Semantics

Recent Courses

See Course Descriptions for detailed information.

• LING 728 Formal Semantics
• LING 739 History and Methodology of Linguistics
• LING 300 Introduction to Language Sciences
• LING 620 Introduction to Syntax
• LING 721 Syntactic Theory

Current Research Project(s)

My primary research area is linguistic theory of the syntactic variety. That is, descriptions and explanations of syntactic structures in natural languages, coupled with attempts to derive from these an understanding of the universal properties of human language. I regularly teach graduate courses on syntactic theory, semantics, and the history of linguistic theory and methodology. I also teach basic courses in Linguistics at the undergraduate level.

Awards and Honors

• 2006 Russell Research Award for Humanities and Social Sciences
• 2007, 2006 Finalist, Mungo Graduate Teaching Award

Publications and Presentations

2007

New Horizons in the Analysis of Control and Raising.
Edited by William D. Davies (University of Iowa) and Stanley Dubinsky (University of South Carolina). 354 pages, 2007. Dordrecht: Springer.
http://www.springer.com/west/home/linguistics/syntax?SGWID=4-40382-22-173735440-0

Raising and control have figured in every comprehensive model of syntax for forty years. Recent renewed attention to them makes this collection a timely one. The contributions, representing some of the most exciting recent work, address many fundamental research questions. What beside the canonical constructions might be subject to raising or control analyses? What constructions traditionally treated as raising or control might not actually be so? What classes of control must be recognized? How do tense, agreement, or clausal completeness figure in their distribution? The chapters address these and other relevant issues, and bring new empirical data into focus.

A window into the syntax of Control: Event opacity in Japanese and English. In Anastasia Conroy, Chunyuan Jing, Chizuru Nakao and Eri Takahashi (eds.), University of Maryland Working Papers in Linguistics (UMWPiL) 15:74-99. College Park MD: UMWPiL. (with Shoko Hamano).

2006

Guest edited issue (9.2) of Syntax: A journal of theoretical, experimental and interdisciplinary research 9:111-223.
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/synt/9/2

A special issue featuring articles based on a symposium at the 2005 LSA annual meeting, “New Horizons in the Grammar of Raising and Control”. (edited with William Davies)

Control into Adverbial Predicate PPs. Japanese/Korean Linguistics 14:177-188. (with Shoko Hamano)

2005

Encyclopedia entry on “Control and Raising” in Keith Brown (ed.-in-chief), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd Edition), vol. 3, 131-138. Oxford: Elsevier Ltd (ISBN 0-08-044299-4). (with William Davies).

2004
The Grammar of Raising and Control: A Course in Syntactic Argumentation
By: WILLIAM D DAVIES (University of Iowa) and STANLEY DUBINSKY (University of South Carolina) 400 pages, 2004
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/book.asp?ref=0631233016&site=1

The Grammar of Raising and Control surveys analyses across a range of theoretical frameworks from Rosenbaum's classic Standard Theory analysis (1967) to current proposals within the Minimalist Program, and provides readers with a critical understanding of these, helping them in the process to develop keen insights into the strengths and weaknesses of syntactic arguments in general.

"The Grammar of Raising and Control is a remarkable book by many criteria. I was extremely impressed by the skillful way in which it interweaves grammatical analysis with the history of the treatment of two central grammatical constructions, at each point zeroing in on how linguists go about arguing for structures and rules. This book belongs on the shelf of every syntactician and student of syntax." -- Frederick J. Newmeyer, University of Washington, Seattle

2003
Case checking by AspP: The syntax and semantics of predicative postpositions. Japanese/Korean Linguistics 12. (with Shoko Hamano)

On extraction from NPs. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21.1-37 . (with William Davies)

2001
Objects and Other Subjects Grammatical Functions, Functional Categories and Configurationality Series
Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory , Vol. 52 Davies, W.D.; Dubinsky, Stanley (Eds.) 2001, 324 p.
http://www.springer.com/west/home/linguistics/syntax?SGWID=4-40382-22-33383901-0

The papers in this volume examine the current role of grammatical functions in transformational syntax in two ways: (i) through largely theoretical considerations of their status, and (ii) through detailed analyses for a wide variety of languages. Taken together the chapters in this volume present a comprehensive view of how transformational syntax characterizes the elusive but often useful notions of subject and object, examining how subject and object properties are distributed among various functional projections, converging sometimes in particular languages.

Objects and other subjects: Grammatical functions, functional categories, and configurationality . Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 52 . Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press. 305 pp. (edited with William Davies)

Bypassing subjacency effects: How event structure amnesties extraction out of object NPs. Proceedings of the North East Linguistics Society (NELS 31). Amherst, MA: GSLA Publications, pp. 199-214. (with William Davies)

2000
Functional projections of predicates: Experimental evidence from coordinate structure processing. Syntax 3.182-214. (with Marie Egan, René Schmauder, and Matthew Traxler)

A novel semantic rule for causee marking and its pedagogical applications. Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 34.1-24. (with Junko Baba)

1999
Teinei/keigo hyoogen: Toogozyoo no soonyuu ni okeru goyooteki kinoo (Polite/honorific expressions: The pragmatic function of syntactic embedding). In Gengogaku to nihongo kyooiku (Linguistics and Japanese language education), Yukiko Sasaki Alam (ed.), 113-128. Tokyo: Kurosio Shuppan. (with Junko Baba)

1998
Epithets as antilogophoric pronouns. Linguistic Inquiry 29.685-693. (with Robert Hamilton)

1997
Syntactic underspecification and light verb phenomena in Japanese. Linguistics 35.627-672.

Predicate union and the syntax of Japanese passives. Journal of Linguistics 33.1-37.

1996
Passive and stative in Chichewa: Evidence for modular distinctions in grammar. Language 72.749-781. (with S. Ron Simango)

1995
Syntactic underspecification: A minimalist approach to light verbs. Formal Approaches to Japanese Linguistics 1, M. Koizumi & H. Ura (eds), MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 24. Cambridge, MA.

Recategorization of prepositions as complementizers. Linguistic Inquiry 26.125-137. (with Kemp Williams)

1994
Predicate union and the syntax of Japanese causatives. Journal of Linguistics 30.43-79.
A challenge to Burzio's generalization: Impersonal transitives in western Bantu. Linguistics 32.47-64. (with Mazemba Nzwanga)

1992
Case assignment to VP-adjoined positions: Nominative objects in Japanese. Linguistics 30.873-910.

1991
On representing and constraining lexical government of syntactic structures. Linguistics 29.1011-1051. (with William Davies)

1990
Japanese object to indirect object demotion. In Studies in relational grammar 3, Paul Postal & Brian Joseph (eds.), 49-86. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

1988
Lexical and syntactic causatives in Oromo. Language 64.485-500. (with Maria-Rosa Lloret & Paul Newman)