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Paul M. Postal

Paul M. Postal is Research Professor in the Department of Linguistics at New York University. He is the author of Edge-Based Clausal Syntax: A Study of (Mostly) English Object Structure (MIT Press, 2011) and other books.

Titles by This Author

Imposters

A Study of Pronominal Agreement
By Chris Collins and Paul M. Postal

Normally, a speaker uses a first person singular pronoun (in English, I, me, mine, myself) to refer to himself or herself. To refer to a single addressee, a speaker uses second person pronouns (you, yours, yourself). But sometimes third person nonpronominal DPs are used to refer to the speaker--for example, this reporter, yours truly--or to the addressee--my lord, the baroness, Madam (Is Madam not feeling well?).

Edge-Based Clausal Syntax

A Study of (Mostly) English Object Structure
By Paul M. Postal

In Edge-Based Clausal Syntax, Paul Postal rejects the notion that an English phrase of the form [V + DP] invariably involves a grammatical relation properly characterized as a direct object. He argues instead that at least three distinct relations occur in such a structure. The different syntactic properties of these three kinds of objects are shown by how they behave in passives, middles, -able forms, tough movement, wh-movement, Heavy NP Shift, Ride Node Raising, re-prefixation, and many other tests.

Three Investigations of Extraction

By Paul M. Postal

In this technical monograph, Paul Postal deals with several issues that inexplicably have been treated only marginally in the development of current linguistic theorizing. He focuses on three problems in syntactic theory that are connected to "extraction"—the occurrence of an element in a distinguished position distinct from its unmarked locus in simple clauses. He examines a largely ignored body of systematic contrasts among known extraction types, the status of the Coordinate Structure Constraint, and the phenomenon of Right Node Raising.

On Raising

An Inquiry into One Rule of English Grammar and Its Theoretical Implications
By Paul M. Postal

For some time it has been generally accepted by students of English grammar that a rule of Raising exists and that it functions to produce derived main clause subjects. Following Rosenbaum's work, it has also been widely accepted that this rule functions in a specified class of cases to derive main clause objects. However, in recent work, Chomsky has rejected the view that there is any Raising rule that produces derived main clause objects. According to his latest position, only the derived subject function of the rule is an actual feature of English grammar.

Titles by This Editor

Parasitic Gaps

Edited by Peter W. Culicover and Paul M. Postal

This book offers a comprehensive survey of research on parasitic gaps, an intriguing syntactic phenomenon. The first section of the book contains a history of work on the topic and three fundamental previously published papers. The remaining three sections present new perspectives on the theory of parasitic gaps based on data taken from diverse languages.