I am a syntactician and wannabe semanticist. My MA thesis at MSU centered on the semantics and pragmatics of the competition between referring expressions in different languages, with particular focus on Romance pronouns and English singular they at the syntax–semantics interface. I wrote my first qualifying paper at SBU on null prepositions and case markers at the syntax–phonology interface; my second qualifying paper argued that a type of hyperraising is attested in English.
My dissertation (in progress) Raising, un-roled: A-movement and the Theta-Criterion is an attempt to pin down the input conditions for hyperraising/cross-clausal A-movement within and across languages, and to understand the role that the Theta Criterion (or something like it) plays in constraining A-movement.
Other things I think are cool but haven't worked on as extensively:
languages where you can say "I am the first person who am going to make a trillion dollars" instead of "I am the person who is going to make a trillion dollars"
adjectives in the wrong places
the cross-linguistic behavior of verbs like die that can't decide if they're unaccusative or unergative
quantificational adverbs like frequently and often
singular they, gendered pronouns and gender in language broadly
2024
Greeson, Daniel and Victor Severino. A new linguistic argument against gender-neutral MASC in Spanish. Talk at the 2024 Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, October 2024. University of Nebraska Omaha, Omaha, NE.
Greeson, Daniel and Victor Severino. The referentiality of Cibaeño ello. Talk at the 2024 Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, October 2024. University of Nebraska Omaha, Omaha, NE.
Greeson, Daniel. Rethinking the connection between (hyper)raising and evidentiality. Talk at the 48th Penn Linguistics Conference (PLC 48), March 16–17, 2024 at UPenn.
Winner of Best Graduate Student Abstract award.
Sneller, Betsy, and Daniel Greeson. Distinct phonological reanalysis patterns in Michigan English TRAP. Talk at the 48th Penn Linguistics Conference (PLC 48), held March 16–17, 2024 at UPenn.
Invited talk at Yale Syntax Reading Group, March 2024. Raising, hyperraising, and thematic structure.
Greeson, Daniel. "Prepositions and case at the syntax–prosody interface." Poster presentation at NELS 54 @ MIT, January 26, 2024. Cambridge, MA. [pdf]
2023
Greeson, Daniel. "The distribution of case on prepositional complements: a PF analysis." Talk at Factors in Natural Language Design (FIND) – the Nominal Domain and Beyond, December 11, 2023. University of Göttingen. [pdf]
Gravely, Brian & Greeson, D. "A layering approach to DP2 agreement." Talk at the special session on syntactic variation at NWAV51 @ Queens College. October 2023.
Greeson, Daniel. "Case and contiguity at PF." Talk at Syntax Near NYU (SynNYU), November 17, 2023. New York University. [slides]
Storment, JD, Swanson, L., and Greeson, Daniel. "It’s 🏕️: Queer Identity and Emoji Use Online." Lavender Languages and Lingusitics 29. March 9–11, 2023. Boise State University.
Greeson, D. "English hyperraising it seems is mediated by the θ-criterion." Workshop on Locality in Theory, Processing and Acquisition. March 31–April 1, 2023. University of Pennsylvania.
2022
Greeson, D. "A competition-based account of partial null subjects in Portuguese." Formal Approaches to Galician and Portuguese Grammar, Dec. 1, 2022. Stony Brook University.
Starr Sandoval, Daniel Greeson, and Marcin Morzycki. "Instrument Names, Bare Singulars, and Event Kinds." Poster presented at Chicago Linguistics Society 58, April 22. [pdf]
Greeson, D. "Overt pronouns as the source of variation between null subject languages." Workshop on Linguistic Variation at the Interfaces II (VARINT21), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, November 18–19, 2021. [abstract]
Greeson, D. "Accounting for the Null/Overt Contrast with Minimize Restrictors!" Oral presentation at North East Linguistics Society (NELS) 52, Rutgers University, October 29–31, 2021. To be presented virtually due to COVID-19. [abstract]
Schmitt, C., Munn, H., Primucci, A., and Greeson, D. “When the Input Underdetermines the Analysis: A case study of acquisition in a contact situation.” Oral presentation at the 9th biannual Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA9), University of Iceland, Reykjavík, May 7–9, 2021. Presented virtually due to COVID-19. [poster]
Greeson, D. “What Does it Mean to ‘Die’? The view from formal syntax.” Paper accepted for oral presentation at the Conference for Classics and Ancient History, Panel 24: NATURE, KNOWLEDGE AND ETHICS IN EPICUREANISM. University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal, June 22–25, 2021. Presented virtually due to COVID-19. [slides]
2020
Greeson, D. “Overt Pronouns as the Source of Variation Between Null Subject Languages.” Guest presentation, McMaster Syntax Lab, November 11, 2020. Presented virtually due to COVID-19. [handout]
Greeson, D. “Revisiting Montalbetti's Effects: New Evidence from Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, and English,” paper presented at the 9th Cambridge Comparative Comparative Syntax Conference (CamCos 9), September 8–11, 2020. Presented virtually due to COVID-19. [handout] [recording]
2019
Greeson, D., Placko, M., and Lubera, B. “Who Is ‘She’? And Can Null Subjects Help Paraguayan Children Find Out?'', poster presented at the 2019 Crete Summer School of Linguistics poster session. University of Crete, Rethymno, Greece July 14, 2019. [poster]
Greeson, D., Placko, M. and Lubera, B. “Is Less More for Learning Pronouns?'', poster presented at the 2019 Great Lakes Expo for Experimental and Formal Undergraduate Linguistics (GLEEFUL). Michigan State University, April 12, 2019. [poster]
2018
Forsythe, H., Greeson, D., and Schmitt, C.. “Learnability in Romance: How Indirect Evidence helps children acquire the contrast between null and overt pronouns,” paper presented at GALANA, Bloomington, IN, September 27–30, 2018. Also presented at the 2018 Hispanic Linguistics Symposium in at UT Austin, Oct. 25–27, 2018 and at BUCLD 43, in Boston, MA, Nov 2–4, 2018. [slides]
Greeson, D. “Null subject realization in Paraguayan Spanish,'' poster presented at the 2018 Michigan State Undergraduate Linguistics Conference (MSULC). Michigan State University, April 20, 2018.
Greeson, D. “How to learn the difference between null and overt subjects,” poster presented at the 2018 Great Lakes Exposition for Experimental and Formal Undergraduate Linguistics (GLEEFUL). Michigan State University, April 21–22, 2018.
Greeson, D., (2021). Revisiting Variation Between Null Subject Languages: The View from Overt Subject Pronouns. [Master's Thesis, Michigan State University]. ProQuest. [pdf]
Committee members in alphabetical order: Adolfo Ausín, Brian Buccola, Alan Munn, Cristina Schmitt (advisor).
Greeson, D. EPP effects in the prepositional domain and beyond. Submitted to Linguistic Variation.
Greeson, D. (2024). Raising, uncased. Snippets.
Gravely, B., Krapp-López, C., and Greeson, D. [Revised and resubmitted]. It's not you, it's your probe: A reply to Béjar & Kahnemuyipour. [lingbuzz]
Forsythe, H., Greeson, D., & Schmitt, C. (2021). After the null subject parameter: Acquisition of the null-overt contrast in Spanish. Language Learning and Development, 1-30.
Forsythe, H., Greeson, D., & Schmitt, C. (2020). How preschoolers acquire the null-overt contrast in Mexican Spanish: Evidence from production. In Language Patterns in Spanish and Beyond (pp. 245-265). Routledge.
Bielawa, C., Davis, R., Greeson, D., & Zhou, Q. (2019). Descents and des-Wilf equivalence of permutations avoiding certain nonclassical patterns. Involve, a Journal of Mathematics, 12(4), 549-563.
Greeson, D. Rethinking the connection between (hyper)raising and evidentiality. To appear in Proceedings of the 48th Penn Linguistics Conference.
Sneller, Betsy, and Greeson, D. Distinct phonological reanalysis patterns in Michigan English TRAP. To appear in Proceedings of the 48th Penn Linguistics Conference..
Greeson, Daniel. (2024). Prepositions and case at the syntax–prosody interface. In Proceedings of NELS 54.
Sandoval, S., Greeson, D., & Morzycki, M. (2022). Instrument Names, Bare Singulars, and Event Kinds. In Proceedings of CLS 58.
Forsythe, H., Greeson, D., & Schmitt, C. (2019). Learnability in Romance: How indirect input helps children acquire the contrast between null and overt subjects. In Proceedings of the 43rd Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 231-244).
worked as an RA investigating Arabic morphology with Ellen Broselow, Robert Hoberman, Jordan Kodner and Owen Rambow.
Presented summaries of relevant literature on children's acquisition of morphology in Arabic
Created a Python script that takes annotated child-directed speech transcripts from CHILDES and creates a lexicon for each child
Modified a pre-existing syllabification script to apply it to dialectal Arabic data