Notre Dame, Paris

Dennis Ott

I'm a third-year graduate student in the Department of Linguistics at Harvard University.

E-mail: dott [at] fas.harvard.edu

Research interests

  • Theoretical syntax: movement
    • A-bar movement, extraction
    • Remnant movement
    • Locality, paths, cyclicity
    • Left periphery, edges
    • Movement in morphology
  • Comparative Germanic syntax
  • Phrase structure, linearization
  • Morphology and phonology of German

Education and honors
Ph.D. in linguistics, Harvard University, in progress
M.A. in linguistics, Harvard University, 2008
B.A. (equiv.) in philosophy and linguistics, University of Cologne, 2006

EGG summer school, Debrecen, 2008
LSA Summer Institute, MIT, 2005

Fellow of the German National Academic Foundation, 2006--2008.
Douglas Dillon Fellowship, Harvard, 2008.

Publications and manuscripts

  • Ott, D. Forthcoming. Phase-level instability: Evidence from Icelandic. In Variation and Universals (Proceedings of The Seventh GLOW in Asia 2009).
  • Ott, D. To appear. The evolution of I-language. What do we know? Biolinguistics.
  • Ott, D. To appear. Multiple NP split. A Distributed Deletion analysis. Groninger Arbeiten zur germanistischen Linguistik 48, pp. 65--80. [LingBuzz]
  • Ott, D. 2009. German diminutives: Spelling out the classifier analysis. Ms., Harvard University.
  • Ott, D. 2009. The conceptual necessity of phases: Some remarks on the minimalist enterprise. In K. K. Grohmann (ed.), Explorations of Phase Theory: Interpretation at the Interfaces, Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 253--275.
  • Ott, D. 2008. Stylistic fronting as remnant movement. Ms., Harvard University. [LingBuzz]
  • Ott, D. 2008. Aspects of Fijian noun-phrase structure. Ms., Harvard University.
  • Ott, D. 2007. Reverse-engineering the language faculty: Origins and implications of the Minimalist Program. In J. Rau et al. (eds.), Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 12, pp. 77--90. [LingBuzz]

Presentations

  • Remnant movement in a world without traces. 30th TABU Dag 2009 (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands, 5/11--12/09)
  • Stylistic fronting as remnant movement. 24th Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop (HUB Brussels, Belgium, 5/28--29/09)
  • Stylistic fronting as remnant movement. UIC TiL (invited talk, University of Illinois at Chicago, 4/10/09)
  • Stylistic fronting as remnant movement. The Seventh GLOW in Asia (EFL-U Hyderabad, India, 2/25--27/09)
  • Reverse-engineering the language faculty. 2007 Mind/Brain/Behavior Graduate Student Conference (Harvard University, 2/16/07)

Teaching

  • Spring 2009
    • Phrase structure (Ling 97r, tutorial)
    • TA for SA 34 (Knowledge of Language)
  • Fall 2008
    • German syntax (Ling 98a, tutorial)
    • TA for Ling 88 (Language and Cognition)

Some links