About

Richard K. Larson is a Distinguished Professor at the Department of Linguistics at Stony Brook University. He earned his Ph.D. in 1983 from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. His research focuses on semantics, syntax, and Iranian languages. As a distinguished faculty member, he contributes significantly to the understanding of linguistic structures and meaning, particularly within the context of Iranian languages.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Philosophy
• Combinatorics
• Mathematics
• Cartography
• Geography
• Linguistics

Selected publications

• Extension Condition "violations" and Merge optimality constraints

  ArXiv.org · 2025-11-27

  preprintOpen access

  We analyze, using the mathematical formulation of Merge within the Strong Minimalist Thesis framework, a set of linguistic phenomena, including head-to-head movement, phrasal affixes and syntactic cliticization, verb-particle alternation, and operator-variable phenomena. These are often regarded as problematic, as violations of the Extension Condition. We show that, in fact, all of these phenomena can be explained without involving any EC violation. We first show that derivations using Sideward Merge are possible for all of these cases: these respect EC, though they involve some amount of optimality violations, with respect to Resource Restrictions cost functions, andthe amount of violation differs among these cases. We show that all the cases that involve large optimality violations can be derived in alternative ways involving neither EC nor the use of SM. The main remaining case (head-to-head movement) only involves SM with minimal violations of optimality (near equilibrium fluctuations). We analyze explicitly also the cases of multiple wh-fronting, clusters of clitics in Romance languages and possessor agreement construction in Korean, and how an explanation of these phenomena based on SM can be made compatible with the colored operad generators for phases and theta roles. We also show that the EC condition has a clear algebraic meaning in the mathematical formulation of Merge and is therefore an intrinsic structural algebraic constraint of the model, rather than an additional assumption. We also show that the minimal optimality violating SM plays a structural role in the Markovian properties of Merge, and we compare different optimality conditions coming from Minimal Search and from Resource Restriction in terms of their effect on the dynamics of the Hopf algebra Markov chain, in a simple explicit example.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Hypermagmas and Colored Operads: Heads, Phases, and Theta Roles

  ArXiv.org · 2025-07-08

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  We show that head functions on syntactic objects extend the magma structure to a hypermagma, with the c-command relation compatible with the magma operation and the m-command relation with the hypermagma. We then show that the structure of head and complement and specifier, additional modifier positions, and the structure of phases in the Extended Projection can be formulated as a bud generating system of a colored operad, in a form similar to the structure of theta roles. We also show that, due to the special form of the colored operad generators, the filtering of freely generated syntactic objects by these coloring rules can be equivalently formulated as a filtering in the course of structure formation via a colored Merge, which can in turn be related to the hypermagma structure. The rules on movement by Internal Merge with respect to phases, the Extended Projection Principle, Empty Category Principle, and Phase Impenetrability Condition are all subsumed into the form of the colored operad generators. Movement compatibilities between the phase structure and the theta roles assignments can then be formulated in terms of the respective colored operads and a transduction of colored operads.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Quantification, matching and events

  Natural Language Semantics · 2024-01-11

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Middle Persian Ezafe

  Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series 4, Current issues in linguistic theory · 2023-03-20 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  Abstract This chapter describes one phase of the historical development of the “Ezafe” morpheme, a significant feature of Western Iranian languages. Ezafe is argued to have arisen in Middle Persian (MP) by a reanalysis of the Old Persian relative pronoun ‘haya’ due to a preponderance of copula-less clauses. It is shown that the distribution of Ezafe in MP resembles that in its modern descendants, but differing in three key respects: (i) MP Ezafe is an independent morpheme, and not a clitic; (ii) it appears to form a constituent with its following phrase; and (iii) it patterns like a preposition in various respects. This distribution, coupled with its emergence in the period when the Old Persian case system was disappearing and core functional prepositions were coming into the language, strongly suggests that Ezafe had the status of a genitive preposition in MP comparable to English ‘of’ . We conclude with some interesting questions for further research raised by these results.

  PublisherDOI

• Adjectives, case and concord

  Language faculty and beyond · 2022-11-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Applied objects in Mandarin and the nature of selection

  Linguistik aktuell · 2022-03-31

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This article examines a range of data involving non-canonical objects in Mandarin mono- and di-transitive sentences. It argues that these represent applied object constructions, in which an oblique argument is “promoted” to the status of a direct object. The core theoretical apparatus employed is that of Larson (2014), which recasts θ-roles as formal syntactic θ-features and θ-role assignment as θ-feature agreement and provides a general account of structure projection and argument inversions like those involved with applied objects. We show that this approach can bring together a wide range of constructions in Mandarin. We conclude with a discussion of these results for the broader understanding of selection. Mandarin non-canonical objects strongly suggest a purely syntactic approach to selection, rather than the semantic approach which is more typically assumed.

  PublisherDOI

• VP-Preposing and Constituency “Paradox”

  Linguistic Inquiry · 2022-08-29 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  English VP-preposing allows VP modifiers to remain on the right (John said he would arrive on Tuesday, and arrive he did, on Tuesday). The classic analysis of this invokes VP constituency, claiming that the modifiers are right-adjoined to VP and stranded by movement of a smaller VP ([VP arrive] he did [VP [VP arrive] on Tuesday]). This article proposes a radically different view based on the copy theory of movement (Chomsky 1993), wherein moved items leave a copy in their site of origin. I propose that VP-preposing always involves movement of the maximal VP with possible/impossible argument/ modifier “strandings” representing possible/impossible pronunciations of the original copy. This proposal allows a straightforward analysis of “paradox” examples in which VP-preposing constituency appears to clash with c-command requirements. It also raises the possibility of eliminating adjunction entirely in the analysis of modifiers.

  PublisherDOI

• Rethinking Cartography

  Language · 2021 · 40 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Cartography
  • Geography

  The CARTOGRAPHIC PROGRAM has investigated interesting crosslinguistic linear orderings among various sentence constituents. Its signature technical move is to postulate HIERARCHIES OF FUNCTIONAL PROJECTIONS related by functional selection. I note three problems that functional hierarchies encounter in capturing linear order: ‘explanation’, ‘plenitude’, and ‘rigidity’. I compare linearity in cartography with linearity in the integers, which involves a single relation (<) ordering the domain. I consider work by Scontras et al. (2017) arguing for a single ‘inequality relation’ underlying the ordering of attributive adjectives in nominals and show how this result can be incorporated into a feature-driven theory of syntactic projection. This captures crosslinguistic linear orderings without appeal to functional selection or functional hierarchies.

  PublisherDOI

• Rethinking Cartography

  Language · 2021-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The cartographic program has investigated interesting crosslinguistic linear orderings among various sentence constituents. Its signature technical move is to postulate hierarchies of functional projections related by functional selection. I note three problems that functional hierarchies encounter in capturing linear order: 'explanation', 'plenitude', and 'rigidity'. I compare linearity in cartography with linearity in the integers, which involves a single relation (<) ordering the domain. I consider work by Scontras et al. (2017) arguing for a single 'inequality relation' underlying the ordering of attributive adjectives in nominals and show how this result can be incorporated into a feature-driven theory of syntactic projection. This captures crosslinguistic linear orderings without appeal to functional selection or functional hierarchies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Ezafe, PP and the nature of nominalization

  Natural Language & Linguistic Theory · 2020 · 36 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Linguistics
  • Mathematics
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Candice Chi-Hang Cheung

  Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust

  7 shared

• Peter Ludlow

  MOH Holdings

  6 shared

• István Kenesei

  University of Szeged

  3 shared

• Viviane Déprez

  Aix-Marseille Université

  3 shared

• Masha Vassilieva

  Stony Brook University

  3 shared

• Hiroko Yamakido

  Fuji Women's University

  3 shared

• Marcel den Dikken

  Eötvös Loránd University

  3 shared

• Vida Samiian

  University of California System

  3 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of Wisconsin - Madison

  1983

Awards & honors

• 1998 EduCom medal