One of the country's leading exponents of linguistic theory, Danny Fox, will visit Cornell
University on May 4-5. His visit is sponsored by The Andrew W. Mellon Central New York
Humanities Corridor, an interdisciplinary partnership with Cornell, Syracuse University and
the University of Rochester. During his visit, Fox will explore various relationships between
syntax and semantics as The Mellon CNY Humanities Corridor's Distinguished Visitor in
Linguistics for spring 2009.
On May 4, Fox will present a lecture from 3-4:30 p.m. titled "Economy and Embedded
Exhaustification," based on a joint research project with Benjamin Spector of Paris' Ecole
Normale Superieure. Fox will also lead a mini course on syntax and semantics from 10 a.m.-
noon on May 4 and 5. All events are free and open to the public and take place in Room 106
of Justin Morrill Hall on the Cornell campus. For more information, call the SU Humanities
Center at (315) 443-5708.
Fox serves as professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),
where he specializes in syntax and semantics. He is the author of numerous articles and
essays, as well as the groundbreaking book "Economy and Semantic Interpretation" (MIT
Press, 1999), praised by MIT colleague Noam Chomsky as a "major contribution to
linguistic theory." Much of Fox's work revolves around principles of optimization, or
economy, as they relate to sentence syntax and semantics.
"Danny Fox is on the cutting edge of linguistic theory, particularly regarding
interconnections between syntax and semantics," says Gregg Lambert, Dean's Professor of
the Humanities in SU's College of Arts and Sciences, founding director of the SU
Humanities Center and principal investigator of The Mellon CNY Humanities Corridor.
"'Economy and Semantic Interpretation' is a highly influential work that presents
compelling arguments for a novel view of linguistic theory."
At Cornell, Fox will discuss a proposal that he recently developed with Martin Hackl of
Pomona College challenging widely held assumptions about grammar, pragmatic process,
lexical meaning and contextual factors. Fox will also touch on implications of a somewhat
different proposal about syntax and semantics by Marta Abrusan and Benjamin Spector,
both at Ecole Normale Superieure. "Fox proposes a particular version of economy
constraints for linguistic theory, whereby syntactic processes that don't affect the actual
shape of utterances can only apply if they affect meaning," says Jaklin Kornfilt, professor of
linguistics in SU's College of Arts and Sciences. "This has huge implications on the
architecture of grammar and on the 'modularity assumption,' in which syntax is
traditionally thought to be separate from semantics."
Fox's visit to Cornell is supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through a four-
year, $1 million award, designed to raise public engagement with and visibility of the
humanities throughout Central New York and to enhance the productivity and connectivity
of its key scholars, students and community members. The Mellon CNY Humanities
Corridor is administered for The College of Arts and Sciences by the SU Humanities Center
and is part of a larger effort to support engaged research and a public dialogue about the
possibilities of humanistic inquiry, coupled with innovative thinking about real-world
problems. More information is available at http://thecollege.syr.edu/mellon/.
