Daniel Greeson

he/him/his

New! My Snippet about hyperraising and minimality (and first solo publication) is now out!

Full text

New! Two new papers about the distribution of null case markers are up on Lingbuzz!

New! I recently successfully defended my second qualifying paper "(Hyper)raising, thematic relations, and events". I'm now happily ABD!

Handout of a subpart of this project that argues English in fact does have hyperraising
Handout of a different subpart, arguing that English infinitival raising and Cantonese & Vietnamese hyperraising share an "indirect evidence" restriction (à la Ming and Yip 2024), and the underlying source of this restriction is the theta-criterion (or something like it)
Manuscript coming very soon!

E-mail: daniel.greeson@stonybrook.edu

Office: N-222 Social and Behavioral Sciences (in the middle of the north wing of the second floor)

Current roles: I am the Department of Linguistics union mobilizer with the Stony Brook GSEU. I am also teaching English Grammar (LIN 320/527) in Summer Session II at SBU. If you need to enroll or have questions about the class, email me or check Slack.

Are you a SUNY grad student? Join your union! https://www.cwa1104gseu.com/become-gseu-member

Daniel Greeson, a tall blonde man, posing for a photograph with a background of autumn leaves in a park

Me in the trees. (📸: Félix Fonseca.)

Hello!

I'm a PhD student in the Department of Linguistics at Stony Brook University, which I joined in fall 2021. I'm advised by Paco Ordóñez and Sandhya Sundaresan. I previously got a BA/MA in Linguistics at the Department of Linguistics, Languages & Culture at Michigan State University, advised by Cristina Schmitt.

My MA thesis focused on the syntactic and semantic properties of pronouns (especially the contrast between null and overt subjects in Romance, and between gendered pronouns and singular they in English). While at MSU, I also worked in the MSU Language Acquisition Lab to look at how kids learn the different properties of subject pronouns in Spanish.

Currently I am working on topics at the syntax–phonology and syntax–semantics interfaces (see the research tab). I am also broadly interested in lavender/LGBT linguistics.

I love comparing data within and between languages & language families like Romance and Dravidian, but I also love to take a closer look at boring old English and convince people that it has fun things like nasal harmony and hyperraising.

Me in another kind of tree.

A syntax tree for the sentence "Daniel it seems does syntax." The crucial parts are that "Daniel" starts out in the embedded clause and then A-moves to the specifier of Subject P in the matrix clause. "It" is based merged in the specifier of little v P in the matrix clause, where it gets a P source theta role, then moves to speck T P.

Here's me recording my pronunciation of talent and other words that seem to have long-distance nazaliation for some Michiganders, as part of joint work led by Betsy Sneller. [Picture credit to Silvina Bongiovanni, also many thanks to her for letting me and Betsy use her nasometer!]