About

Ethan Poole is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at UCLA. His research focuses on syntax and the syntax-semantics interface.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Philosophy
• Linguistics
• Mathematical economics
• Natural Language Processing
• Mathematics
• Epistemology
• Theoretical physics
• Physics
• Aesthetics
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Not all reconstruction effects are syntactic

  Natural Language & Linguistic Theory · 2024 · 19 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Natural Language Processing

  Abstract This paper argues that not all reconstruction effects can be reduced to a syntactic mechanism that selectively interprets copies at LF. The argument is based on the novel observation that some but not all reconstruction effects induce Condition C connectivity in Hindi-Urdu. We contend that Hindi-Urdu requires the hybrid approach to reconstruction developed on independent grounds by Lechner (1998, 2013, 2019), where both copy neglect (a syntactic mechanism) and higher-type traces (a semantic mechanism) are available as independent interpretive mechanisms. We show that the interaction of these two modes of reconstruction derives the intricate reconstruction facts in Hindi-Urdu.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Dependent-case assignment could be AGREE

  Glossa a journal of general linguistics · 2023 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Mathematical economics

  Preminger (to appear) claims that an AGREE-based theory of case assignment undergenerates because it cannot handle attested dependent-case patterns. This paper argues that dependent-case assignment can in fact be modelled using the operation AGREE, building on independently motivated assumptions. Therefore, an AGREE-based theory of case assignment does not undergenerate.

  PublisherDOI

• Improper case

  Natural Language & Linguistic Theory · 2022 · 6 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science

  Abstract This paper argues that case assignment is impossible in configurations that parallel generalized improper-movement configurations. Thus, like improper movement, there is “improper case.” The empirical motivation comes from (i) the interaction between case and movement and (ii) crossclausal case assignment in Finnish. I propose that improper case is ruled out by the Ban on Improper Case : a DP in [Spec, XP] cannot establish a dependent-case relationship with a lower DP across YP if Y is higher than X in the functional sequence. I show that this constraint falls under a strong version of the Williams Cycle (Williams 1974, 2003, 2013; van Riemsdijk and Williams 1981) and is derived under Williams’s (2003, 2013) analysis of embedding.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Movement and the Semantic Type of Traces

  Scholarworks (University of Massachusetts Amherst) · 2021-04-01 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  When Ella Young Flagg, the first female superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools, proposed that educational leadership was a woman’s “natural field” she could not have predicted that one hundred years later women would have neither a majority of school leadership positions, nor would they be proportionally represented when compared with female teachers (Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011). Unlike the school leadership positions of the principal and superintendent that have been traditionally dominated by men, female leaders have achieved greater parity in special education administration (Keefe & Parmley, 2003). Although female special education administrators represent an exception to this phenomenon of underrepresentation in school leadership, limited research has been done on this specific population. The purpose of this qualitative study with phenomenological interviewing was to understand the leadership experiences of female special education administrators. The central research question asked: How do female administrators in special education understand their leadership experiences? Eight female special education administrators shared how their personal history and their current leadership experiences influenced their leadership behaviors. For the female special education administrators, their leadership experiences were understood as (1) collaborative-relational, (2) instructional, (3) activism, (4) political, and (5) balanced. Parallels between women’s leadership and the foundations of special education offer an explanation for the success of women leaders in the field. A model of the ways female administrators of special education lead is included. The model demonstrates how collaborative-relational leadership is central to female leadership in special education. Recommendations for future research are included.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• There Are No Property Traces

  2018-01-01 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

• Constraining (shifting) types at the interface

  ZAS Papers in Linguistics · 2018-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper argues that traces only range over individual semantic types and cannot betype shifted into higher types to circumvent this restriction. The evidence comes from movementtargeting positions where DPs must denote properties and the behavior of definite descriptionsin these positions. These constraints on possible traces demonstrate that syntactic operationsimpose active restrictions on permissible semantic types in natural language.Keywords: semantic types, traces, movement, reconstruction, type shifting, properties.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Spurious NPI licensing and exhaustification

  Proceedings from Semantics and Linguistic Theory · 2018-10-15 · 49 citations

  articleOpen access

  Under certain circumstances, speakers are subject to so-called spurious NPI licensing effects, whereby they perceive that NPIs without a c–commanding licensor are in fact licensed and grammatical. Previous studies have all involved the presence of a licensor in a position that linearly precedes, but does not c–command the NPI. In this paper, we show that spurious NPI licensing can occur in the outright absence of a licensor, in contexts that force an exhaustive parse. We reason that at least these instances of spurious NPI licensing might be reduced to the E XH operator pragmatically “rescuing” the NPI, in the sense of Giannakidou (1998, 2006).

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Intervention in tough-constructions revisited

  The Linguistic Review · 2017-06-09 · 22 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract In this paper, we subject to closer scrutiny one particularly influential recent argument in favour of the long-movement analysis of tough -constructions. Hartman (2011, 2012a, 2012b) discovered that experiencer PPs lead to ungrammaticality in tough -constructions, but not in expletive constructions. He attributes this ungrammaticality to defective intervention of A-movement, a movement step crucially postulated only in the long-movement analysis. He takes this as evidence that tough -constructions are derived via long movement. We make the novel observation that a PP intervention effect analogous to that in tough -constructions also arises in constructions that do not involve A-movement, namely pretty-predicate constructions and gapped degree phrases. Consequently, the intervention effect does not provide an argument for an A-movement step in tough -constructions or for the long-movement analysis, but rather for the base-generation analysis. We develop a uniform account of the intervention effects as a semantic-type mismatch. In particular, we propose that what unifies tough -constructions, pretty-predicate constructions, and gapped degree phrases is that they all have an embedded clause that is a null-operator structure. Introducing an experiencer PP into these constructions creates an irresolvable semantic-type mismatch. As such, we argue for a reassessment of what appears to be a syntactic locality constraint as an incompatibility in the semantic composition.

  PublisherDOI

• Deriving subject and antisubject orientation

  2016-11-23 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author

  This paper investigates subject and antisubject orientation in Hindi-Urdu. We argue that the locus of these two binding constraints is Voice 0 , the functional head responsible for binding the anaphoric possessor apnaa , wherein the binder of apnaa must raise to [Spec, VoiceP]. Subject orientation reduces to the locality of A-movement. Antisubject orientation is the result of a preference to use the anaphor apnaa whenever possible. We show that this proposal extends to dative–nominative structures, where the complementarity of subject and antisubject orientation for anaphors and pronouns breaks down. Finally, we examine speaker variation of quantifier binding with uskaa in dative–nominative structures.

  Publisher

• Deconstructing quirky subjects

  2015-01-01 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Subjects display an array of properties unique to them. A theory of subjecthood is therefore a theory of the distribution of subjecthood properties. The predominant approach has been to reduce subjecthood to a purely structural phenomenon wherein subjecthood properties are the result of moving to [Spec, TP] (e.g. Chomsky 1981, 2001). This approach readily accounts for canonical nominative subjects, but does not straightforwardly extend to quirky (nonnominative ) subjects (QSs). In many languages, QSs only exhibit a proper subset of the subjecthood properties exhibited by canonical nominative subjects. This is prima facie incompatible with a view that subjecthood is a unitary property, i.e. all-or-nothing. This paper makes two central claims.1 First, subjecthood properties manifest on a DP in accordance with an implicational hierarchy, the Quirky Subject Hierarchy (QSH) given in (1). The empirical motivation for the QSH comes from a crosslinguistic study of QSs in Hindi-Urdu (henceforth Hindi), German, Basque, Icelandic, and Laz.

  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Brian Dillon

  3 shared

• Jon Ander Mendia

  Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

  3 shared

• Stefan Keine

  University of California, Los Angeles

  2 shared

• Sakshi Bhatia

  Central University of Rajasthan

  1 shared

• A. M. Binnie

  1 shared

• J. Hodgkinson

  Cranfield University

  1 shared