Jonathan Bobaljik Explained

Jonathan David Bobaljik
Occupation:	Linguist
Thesis Title:	Morphosyntax: The syntax of verbal inflection
Thesis Url:	https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/11351/33193540-MIT.pdf?sequence=2
Thesis Year:	1995
Sub Discipline:	Distributed Morphology
Notable Ideas:	Comparative-Superlative Generalization

Jonathan David Bobaljik is a Canadian linguist specializing in morphology, syntax, and typology. Bobaljik received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995 with a thesis titled Morphosyntax: The syntax of verbal inflection advised by Noam Chomsky and David Pesetsky. He is currently a professor at Harvard University^[1] and has previously held positions at McGill University and University of Connecticut.^[2] He is a leading scholar in the area of Distributed Morphology.

In 2012, Bobaljik published a book (Universals in Comparative Morphology: Suppletion, Superlatives and the Structure of Words) on universals in comparative constructions, where he proposes the Comparative-Superlative Generalization. This book was awarded the Linguistic Society of America's Leonard Bloomfield Book Award.^[3]

Bobaljik has worked extensively on the critically endangered Itelmen language. He has participated in the development of an Itelmen-Russian dictionary,^[4] its mobile app,^[5] and is currently working on an audio and video dictionary of the language.^[6]

References

Selected works

• Bobaljik. Jonathan David. 1995. Morphosyntax: The syntax of verbal inflection. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• The ins and outs of contextual allomorphy. 2000. Jonathan David. Bobaljik. University of Maryland Working Papers in Linguistics. 10. 35–71.
• A-Chains at the PF Interface: Copies and Covert Movement. 2002. Bobaljik. Jonathan David. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. 20. 2. 197–267. 10.1023/A:1015059006439. 48014761.
• Jonathan David. Bobaljik. Susi. Wurmbrand. Notes on agreement in Itelmen. 2002. Linguistic Discovery. 1. 1. 10.1349/PS1.1537-0852.A.21. free.
• Book: Bobaljik, Jonathan D. . 2006a. Paradigms (Optimal and Otherwise): A case for scepticism. A.. Bachrach. A.I.. Nevins. Inflectional Identity. Oxford University Press. 10.7282/T34Q7RZW.
• Jonathan David. Bobaljik. 2006b. Itelmen Reduplication: Edge-In Association and Lexical Stratification. Journal of Linguistics. 42. 1. 1–23. 10.1017/S0022226705003671. 33194391.
• Book: Bobaljik, Jonathan David. 2008. Where's phi? Agreement as a post-syntactic operation. Phi-Theory: Phi features across interfaces and modules. 295–328.
• Book: Bobaljik, Jonathan David. 2012. Universals in Comparative Morphology: Suppletion, superlatives, and the structure of words. MIT Press.
• Encyclopedia: Jonathan David. Bobaljik. 2017. Distributed Morphology. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Mark. Aronoff. Oxford University Press.

Notes and References

1. Web site: Personal website.
2. Web site: CV. https://web.archive.org/web/20180508125408/http://bobaljik.uconn.edu/cv.pdf. May 8, 2018.
3. Web site: Leonard Bloomfield Book Award Previous Holders. https://web.archive.org/web/20220305080502/https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/leonard-bloomfield-book-award-previous-holders. March 5, 2022.
4. Book: 2021. ПОЛНЫЙ:ИТЕЛЬМЕНСКО-РУССКИЙ СЛОВАРЬ. . https://web.archive.org/web/20220331224510/https://iling.spb.ru/dictionaries/itelmen/itelmen-dictionary.pdf. March 31, 2022.
5. Book: Volodin, A.P.. Ительменский словарь (mobile Version). Chikako. Ono. Jonathan D.. Bobaljik. David. Koester. Michael. Krauss.
6. Web site: Itelmen Audio Video Dictionary.