Samuel Jay Keyser

Massachusetts Institute of Technology | MIT · Department of Linguistics and Philosophy

IN APRIL of 1846, in Graham's Magazine, Edgar Allan Poe published an essay that would become one of his most frequently anthologized texts, "The Philosophy of Composition." In it he proposed an account of what we would now call the "algorithm" according to which he created his most successful poem, "The Raven," published only the year before. His s...

Contains table of contents for Part V, table of contents for Section 1, reports on six research projects and a list of publications.

Contains table of contents for Part V, table of contents for Section 1, reports on six research projects and a list of publications.

Contains table of contents for Part IV, table of contents for Section 1, an introduction and reports on nine research projects and a list of publications.

Contains reports on five research projects.

Contains table of contents for Part IV, table of contents for Section 1 and reports on five research projects.

Contains reports on five research projects.

Contains reports on two research projects.

Contains reports on three research projects.

This paper explores three aspects of a theory of speech production and perception: quantal theory, enhancement, and overlap. The section on quantal theory makes the claim that every phonological feature or contrast is associated with its own quantal footprint. This footprint for a given feature is a discontinuous (or quantal) relation between the d...

A model of speech production is proposed in which the input is a planning stage at which lexical items are arrayed, accompanied by the full panoply of phonological representations from distinctive features to their attendant tree structures. A set of instructions for control of the vocal tract is calculated leading to a sound output. Two parallel p...

This chapter uses argument structure to refer to the syntactic configuration projected by a lexical item: a verb, a preposition, or other nuclear element. In terms of this framework three linguistic subsystems are examined: conflation; merge and obviation; and active and stative. It is argued that contrary to earlier positions taken by the authors,...

this paper is to attempt to explain certain counterexamples to the picture presented above. Consider, for example, the use of English get in the analytic location construction get the books on the shelf, in the sense of "put the books on the shelf." This has an intransitive counterpart, the books got on the shelf (mysteriously), not accounted for i...

This work is the culmination of an eighteen-year collaboration between Ken Hale and Samuel Jay Keyser on the study of the syntax of lexical items. It examines the hypothesis that the behavior of lexical items may be explained in terms of a very small number of very simple principles. In particular, a lexical item is assumed to project a syntactic c...

The essays in this collection celebrate Ken Hale's lifelong study of underdocumented languages and their implications for universal grammar. The authors report their latest research in syntax, morphology, semantics, phonology, and phonetics. Contributors Elena Anagnostopoulou, Noam Chomsky, Michel DeGraff, Kai von Fintel, Morris Halle, James Harris...

The essays in this collection celebrate Ken Hale's lifelong study of underdocumented languages and their implications for universal grammar. The authors report their latest research in syntax, morphology, semantics, phonology, and phonetics. Contributors Elena Anagnostopoulou, Noam Chomsky, Michel DeGraff, Kai von Fintel, Morris Halle, James Harris...

It is assumed that words are stored in memory as sequences of bundles of distinctive features. Accessing words from the acoustic signal requires that these features be identified and organized into segments. Variability is a major obstacle to this process. Accounting for this variability requires a clear understanding of how variability arises when...

There exists a class of English verbs whose members are customarily brought forth as paradigm examples of the unaccusative class. Unlike the much larger class of unaccusatives of the break-type, which enter freely into the standard transitivity alternation, verbs of the arrive-type at issue here do not transitivize; and in addition—to some degree,...

Perhaps the most important insight in phonological theory since the introduction of the concept of the phoneme has been the role that distinctive features play in phonological theory (Jakobson et al. 1952). Most research since Jakobson's early formulation has focused on the segmental properties of these features without reference to their hierarchi...

The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.

Among the distinctive features for consonants, we distinguish a set of primary features that are perceptually the most salient. The strength with which a primary feature is manifested in a given sound is influenced by the secondary features that co-occur with it. The features [sonorant], [continuant] and [coronal] are designated as primary, and thi...

characteristics of speech communication are investigated. Topics include the acoustic properties of different languages, speech error patterns, auditory models and speech processing, speech production physiology, speech recognition, and computer based speech research facilities.

Until quite recently, researchers tended to study human cognition in terms of what they understood best rather than in terms of what people did best. Marr and Nishihara (1978) made this point rather nicely

This paper begins by distinguishing phonology (the study of the systematic nature of the inter-relations of sounds in a language) from phonetics (the attempt to describe completely all the physical properties of an utterance). It is shown how in any language some properties of sounds are intuitively more relevant to the grammar and functioning of t...

The authors answer criticisms of two previous articles on the theory of prosody. (MR)

While metrical verse also fails to be rightjustified, the lines that make up metrical verse are subject to measurement just as surely as if they were made of cloth, and both poet and reader had a yardstick. The units in terms of which lines are measured are, of course, not yards and inches, but syllables and feet, where feet-as we detail below-are...

INTRODUCTION In this article we propose to character-ize the accentual-syllabic meter known as iambic pentameter in the form in which it was first used by Geoffrey Chaucer. We view this meter as an abstract pattern which the poet has created or adopted, perhaps only in part consciously. The poet uses this pattern as a basis of selection so that he...