Alexander Grosu, CURRICULUM VITAE
Personal
25.12.1935: Born in Bucharest, Romania
26.01.1961: Immigration to Israel
1961-1987: Reserve military service
Family status: Married, one son.
Home address: 97, Chaim Levanon St., Tel Aviv 69345, Israel
Tel: Home 972-3-641.9937, Office 972-3-640.5021
Email: grosua@post.tau.ac.il
Education
1942 – 1953: Elementary and High School, Matriculation, in Bucharest.
1953 – 1958: Bucharest Academy of Music (piano, chamber music); MA (summa cum laude).
1966 – 1969: Tel Aviv University (linguistics and English literature); BA (summa cum laude).
1969-1971: The Ohio State University (linguistics); MA.
1971-1972: The Ohio State University (linguistics); Ph.D.
Master Thesis: On coreferentiality constraints and Equi-NP-Deletion in English.
Superviser: Prof. Arnold Zwicky.
Doctoral Thesis: The strategic content of island constraints.
Superviser: Prof. Arnold Zwicky.
Academic and professional experience
1961-1967: Piano teacher, Conservatoire and Academy of Music, Tel Aviv.
1963-1969: Free lance simultaneous interpreter.
1972 – present: Tel Aviv University member of the academic staff (linguistics).
1973: Senior lecturer, Tenure.
1978: Associate professor.
1982: Full professor. – Emeritus since October 2005.
1980-1983, 1988-1993, 1995-1995: Chair of linguistics.
1975 (summer): Universities of Pretoria and the Witswatersrand, visiting lecturer.
1975-6: University of California at Los Angeles, visiting professor.
1978: University of South Africa, visiting associate professor.
1983-4: The Max Planck Institut fuer Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen, Holland, research fellow.
1990: University of Stuttgart, D.A.A.D. fellow (July, August).
1990: Universite de Montreal, Visiting Professor (September, October)
1991: University of Ottawa, Visiting Professor (September)
1991, 1992, 1993: Universite Paris 7, Visiting Professor (February)
1994-5: Universite de Montreal, Visiting Professor (September-January)
1995: University of Bucharest, Visiting Scholar (October)
1999: Zentrum fuer Allegemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin, Visiting Scholar (July)
2000: Universite Paris 3, Visiting Scholar (March-May)
2003: University of Leiden, Visiting Scholar (March, April).
2003: Zentrum fuer Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin, Visiting Scholar (May, June)
2003: La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, Visiting Scholar (July, August)
2006: University of Bucharest, Visiting Scholar (May)
2008: Babes-Boliay University, Cluj-Napoca, Visiting Scholar.
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Knowledge of languages: Romanian (native), French, English (native-like).
German, Spanish, Hebrew (good)
Research interests: The syntax-semantics interface, Syntactic theory, Syntax of Romance and Germanic
languages, Syntax-semantics of relative clauses in the languages of the world.
Conference and colloquium talks
April 1971. The perceptual content of some grammatical constraints. Chicago Linguistic Society Annual
Meeting.
April 1972. Is the A-over-A Principle an A-over-A Principle? Chicago Linguistic Society Annual Meeting.
January 1973. The binary nature of the coordinate structure constraint. Linguistic Society of America
Winter Meeting.
March 1973. The proper formulation of the Sentential Subject Constraint. Santa Cruz Linguistics conference.
April 1974. On extraction from clause-nonfinal constituents. Chicago Linguistic Society Annual Meeting.
July 1974. The structural position of clause-initial interrogative and relative pronouns. Linguistic Society
of America Summer Meeting.
April 1975. A plea for greater caution in proposing functional explanations in linguistics. The parassession
on functionalism of the Chicago Linguistic Society Annual Meeting (invited presentation)
January 1976. On the distributional restrictions of complement clauses (with Sandra Thompson).
Berkeley Linguistic Society Summer Meeting.
June 1978. Island Constraints and their pragmatic component. Israeli University Teachers’ Annual Meeting.
June 1980. Island Constraints and processing. International Congress on language, logic and discourse
Theory, Tel Aviv University.
July 1983. The coordination of categorially and functionally distinct constituents. Linguistic Society
of America Summer Meeting.
June 1984. Heterofunctional coordination and focus, First Israel International Congress on cognitive science.
Also given at the Max Planck Institut fuer Psycholinguistik (Sept. 1983), The Catholic University of
Nijmegen (Dec. 1983), The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Science (March 1984), The University
of Bochum (April 1984), The University of Salzburg (May 1984), and the University of Toronto
(June 1984).
June 1989. Matching and anti-Pied-Piping constraints in finite and nonfinite free relatives, The Israel
Association of Theoretical Linguistics. Also given at the University of Regensburg (June 1986), the
University of Passau (August 1986), the University of Tuebingen (June 1990), the University of Montreal
(September 1990), the University of Quebec at Montreal (October 1990), the University of Ottawa
(September 1991) and the University of Paris 8 (February 1992).
June 1992. Free relatives with a ‚missing’ preposition in Romanian, French, English and German. The
Venice International Conference on Romanian Theoretical Linguistics (invited presentation), and the Israel
Association for Theoretical Linguistics Annual Meeting (June 1992).
September 1995. The ambiguous operator/complementizer status of French qui/que and Romanian ce,
The International Colloquium on the lexicon and syntax of Romance languages, Tel Aviv University.
October 1995. The semantic typology of relative clauses in the languages of the world. University of
Bucharest, Romania.
October 1995. Strange relatives of the third kind (with Fred Landman), The First Paris International
Conference on Syntax and Semantics. Also given at the Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics
Annual Meeting (June 1995), and the Amsterdam Colloquium on formal semantics and computational
Linguistics (January 1996).
January 1996. Carlson’s last puzzle; will it go the way of Fermat’s last theorem? (with Fred Landman)
Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics Annual Workshop. Also given at The First International
Conference on (preferably) non-lexical semantics, University of Paris 7 (May 1996).
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February 1997. An augmented typology of relative clause constructions, The International Colloquium on
Determiner Phrases, Zentrum fuer Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin (invited presentation).
February 1997. Antisymmetry and the tripartite typology of relative clause constructions, Incontro di
Grammatica Generativa 23, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa.
September 1997. The syntactic underpinnings of the tripartite typology of relatives, The Colloquium on
Interface Strategies, Amsterdam (invited presentation).
February 1998. Competing restrictive and maximalizing readings in English headed relatives, Incontro di
Grammatica Generativa 24, University of Verona.
February 1998. Agreement and lack of agreement in operator phrases (with Josef Bayer), Incontro di
Grammatica Generativa 24, University of Verona.
May 1998. Kongruenz und Nichtkongruenz bei Operatoren (with Josef Bayer), Generative Grammatik im
Sueden, Universitaet Salzburg.
May 1998. Carlson’s contexts are ‚filters’ not ‚plugs’, The Second International Conference on (preferably)
non-lexical semantics, University of Paris 7. Also given at the Israel Association for Theoretical
Linguistics Annual Meeting (June 1998), the colloquium on relative clauses at the Holland Institute of
Linguistics, Leiden (June 1998; invited presentation), and Zentrum fuer Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft,
Berlin (June 1998; invited presentation).
October 1998. Restrictive and maximalizing options in internally- and externally-headed relatives, The
International Colloquium on Comparatives and Relatives, Zentrum fuer Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft,
Berlin. Also given at Incontro di Grammatica Generative 25, Siena (February 1999).
March 2000. Transparent Free Relatives are internally headed. Incontro di Grammatica Generativa 26,
University of Rome. Also given at the International Colloquium on Relatives, Tel Aviv University
(June 2000).
January 2000. Transparent Free Relatives as a special subcase of standard free relatives. The conference
On the structure of DPs/NPs, University of Antwerp. Also given at the Incontro di Grammatica Generativa
27, University of Trieste, and the ACME Balcanica Conference, Concordia University, Montreal
(April 2001).
June 2001. Another look at the distribution of genitive nominals in Romanian, International Conference
On the Balkan Sprachbund, Leiden (invited presentation).
June 2002: Modal Existential wh-Constructions. Annual Meeting of the Israel Society for Theoretical
Linguistics (June 2002). Also given at the Colloquium on Comparative Romance Linguistics, Antwerp
(September 2002), the Colloque Indéfinis et Prédications, La Sorbonne (October 2002), and the Incontro
di Grammatica Generativa IGG 29, University of Urbino (February 2003).
February 2004: Argumental relative constructions with post-copular gaps; the licensing role of temporal and
modal operators (joint work with Manfred Krifka). IGG 30, Univ. of Venice. Also given at the Colloque
sur les arguments et la predication (in French; Tel Aviv Univ., June 2004), the Annual Meeting of the
Israel Society for Theoretical Linguistics (June 2004), the International Conference on
Time and Space, Antwerp, September 2004 (keynote speaker), the conference Sinn und Bedeutung,
Nijmegen, November 2004 (presented by Krifka), and the international conference Le discourse francais:
perspectives linguistiques et litteraires, Craiova, Romania, May 2006 (keynote speaker).
January 2005: Reply to Bhatt & Pancheva's "Late merger of degree clauses": The irrelevance of (non-)
Conservativity, The Conference on Indefinites and Weak Nominals, Brussels. Also given at the
Annual Conference of Theoretical Linguistics, University of Bucharest, June 2006 (keynote speaker).
May 2006: An amalgam and its puzzles, Colloque sur les concepts trans- et inter-culturels, University
of Bucharest (keynote speaker).
June 2006: On the pre-theoretical notion 'phrasal head': Ignoring the left periphery is always at your
own risk, International Conference on Interface Legibility at the Edge, Bucharest (keynote speaker).
May, 2008: On the analysis of constructions with prima facie non-standard 'pivots': free and transparent
relatives, amalgams, and (other) 'far from simple' things.GGS-Tagung, ZAS, Berlin.
June, 2008. Two very different types of internally-headed relatives. Yearly international conference of the
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Faculty of Humanities, University of Bucharest. Also given (in Romanian) at the Institute of the
Romanian Academy of Sciences.
October, 2008. A Hybrid construction in Romanian? International conference on grammatization and
pragmatization, University of Bucharest.
Fellowships, grants, awards:
1969-1972: Tel Aviv University Fellowship for graduate studies at the Ohio State University.
1970: Linguistic Society of America Fellowship for attending its summer institute.
1971: Linguistic Society of America Fellowship for attending its summer institute.
1971-1972: Ohio State University dissertation fellowship.
1983-1984: Max Planck research fellowship.
1990: D.A.A.D. two-month fellowship.
1998-2000: Israel Science Foundation grant, A tripartite typology of relative clause constructions
(with Fred Landman).
1998-1999: Tel Aviv University Internal Fund grant.
2000-2001: Israel Science Foundation grant, Relations between relative clauses and adjectival constructions
(with Fred Landman).
2001-2002: Israel Science Foundation grant: Maximalizing relatives as grammatizations of E-type anaphora.
2001-2002: Tel Aviv University Internal Fund grant.
2001-2002: Kurt-Lion Foundation grant, Case, Agreement, and the Licensing of Arguments
(with Josef Bayer, University of Konstanz).
2002: Honorary doctorate of the University of Bucharest, Romania.
2003: Two-month fellowship of the Dutch National Research Foundation.
2006-2009: Israel Science Foundation grant: Parallelisms between relative clauses and degree
constructions (with Fred Landman)
2007-2008: Tel Aviv University Internal Fund grant.
2008-2009: Kurt-Lion Foundation grant, Focus and Ellipsis
(with Josef Bayer, Konstanz, and Julia Horvath, Tel Aviv University)
2008-2009: Tel Aviv University Internal Grant.
PUBLICATIONS
Books:
1972: The strategic content of island constraints. The Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics
13 (special issue; revised doctoral thesis).
1981: Approaches to Island Phenomena. North Holland Linguistic Series No. 45.
1994: Three Studies in Locality and Case. Routledge, General Linguistics Series.
Articles:
1969: The isomorphism of semantic and syntactic categories as illustrated by a study of sex and gender,
numerosity and number, in English and Hebrew. Hebrew Computational Linguistics No. 1.
1971: On coreferentiality constraints and Equi-NP-Deletion in English. OSU WPL No. 7.
1971: On grammatical and perceptual constraints. CLS No. 6.
1972: Is the A-over-A Principle an A-over-A principle? CLS No. 7.
1972 (with Wolfgang Dressler): Generative Phonologie und Indogermanische Lautgeschichte; eine kritische
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Wuerdigung. Indogermanische Forschungen No. 77, 1.
1973: On the nonunitary nature of the Coordinate Structure Constraint. Linguistic Inquiry No. 4.
1973: Another remark on Dragging. Linguistic Inquiry No. 4.
1974: On the nature of the Left Branch Condition. Linguistic Inquiry No. 5.
1974: On selfembedding and double function. Linguistic Inquiry No. 5.
1975: On selfembedding constructions. Die Sprache No. 21.
1975: A note on analogy. Linguistic Inquiry No. 6.
1975: The position of fronted wh-phrases. Linguistic Inquiry No. 6.
1975: A plea for greater caution in proposing functional explanations in linguistics. CLS Parassession
Functionalism (invited contribution).
1975: On the status of positionally-defined constraints in syntax. Theoretical Linguistics No. 2.
1976 (with Ruth Berman): Aspects of the opula in Modern Hebrew. In Peter Cole, ed., Studies in
Modern Hebrew Syntax and Semantics, North Holland.
1976: A note on Subject Raising to Object and Right Node Raising. Linguistic Inquiry No. 8.
1976: thatc  thatr .Die Sprache No. 22.
1977: Is make the claim a complex lexical item? Linguistic Inquiry No. 8.
1977: The complexity of centerembedding. Talseminar No. 20.
1977: Towards a realistic model of the human language faculty. Lingua 41 (Review-article of
Chomsky’s Reflections on Language, 1975)
1977 (with Sandra Thompson): Constraints on the distribution of NP clauses. Language No. 53.
1978: On unbounded extraction phenomena and the so called Specified Subject Condition.
CUNYForum No. 4.
1978: Coordination Reduction versus Across-the-board Reordering within the Extended Standard
Theory. Taalfasette No. 24.
1980: On the analogical extension of rule domains. Theoretical Linguistics No. 7.
1981: Should there be a (restricted) rule of Conjunction Reduction? Linguistic Inquiry No. 12.
1982: The extrammatical content of certain ‚island constraints.’ Theoretical Linguistics No. 9.
1984 (with Julia Horvath): The GB theory and Raising in Romanian. Linguistic Inquiry No. 15.
1984: An analogical approach to noun clause distribution. Theoretical Linguistics No. 11.
1986: Subcategorization and parallelism. Theoretical Linguistics No. 13.
1987: On acceptable violations of parallelism constraints. In R. Dirven ed., Functionalism,
John Benjamins.
1987 (with Julia Horvath): On non-finiteness in extraction constructions. Natural Language
and Linguistic Theory No. 5.
1987 (with Julia Horvath): On the notion ‚pseudo-head’; evidence from Romanian free relative and
interrogative constructions. Theoretical Linguistics 14.
1988: On an asymmetry in the distribution of island constraints. Lingua No. 74.
1988: On the distribution of genitive phrases in Romanian. Linguistics 26.
1989: Pied Piping and the Matching Parameter. The Linguistic Review No. 6.
1992: Une etude de celui et de cel dans le cadre de la Theorie de la Projection Etendue. Travaux
de Linguistique.
1994: The structural diversity of restrictive and maximalizing relatives. In Buchalla & Mittwoch
eds., Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics No. 1.
1995: Free relatives with a ’missing’ preposition. In Cinque & Giusti eds., Advances in Romanian
Linguistics, John Benjamins.
1995: Null and overt operators in French and Romanian. In Kupferman & Bat-Zeev eds., A Festschrift for
David Gaatone, John Benjamins.
1995: The grammar of irrealis free relatives in Romanian. In Paun ed., A Festschrift for Solomon Marcus,
The Romanian Academy of Sciences Press.
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1996: The proper analysis of ’missing-P’ free relative constructions. Linguistic Inquiry No. 27.
1996 (with Fred Landman): Carlson’s last puzzle; will it go the way of Fermat’s last theorem? In Doron
and Wintner eds., Proceedings of the Annual Conference and Workshop of the Israel Association
for Theoretical Linguistics No. 3.
1998 (with Fred Landman): Strange Relatives of the Third Kind. Natural Language Semantics.
1999: The multiple sources of maximality in degree relatives. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the
Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics No. 6.
2000a: Type resolution in relative constructions. Feature marking and dependency encoding. In Alexiadou &
Wilder eds., The syntax of relative clauses, John Benjamins.
2000b: Type resolution in relative constructions. Competing restrictive and maximalizing constructions. In
Bennis, Everaert & Reuland eds., Interface Strategies, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
2000c: An unusual Romanian construction and its theoretical implications. In Coene, Dendale & D’Hulst
eds., Studia Linguistics in honorem Lilianne Tasmowsky. Unipress: Padova.
2000d: The semantic diversity of internally-headed relative clauses. In Schaner-Wolles, Rennisson &
Neubarth, eds., Linguistic Studies in honour of Wolfgang Ulrich Dressler presented on his 60th birthday.
Rosenberg & Sellier: Torino.
2000e (with Josef Bayer): Feature-checking meets the criterion approach; three ways of saying ‚only’ in
Romance and Germanic. In Motapanyane ed., Comparative Studies in Romanian Syntax.
North Holland Linguistic Series 58: Amsterdam, Oxford & New York.
2002: Strange relatives at the interface of two millennia. State-of-the-Article, GLOT International 6, 6,
145-167.
2003a: ‘Transparent’ free relatives as a special instance of ‘standard’ free relatives. The structure of DPs,
Coene, D’Hulst & Tasmovski, eds., Elsevier North-Holland: Amsterdam.
2003b: A unified theory of ‘standard’ and ‘transparent’ free relatives. Natural Language and Linguistic
Theory 21, 2, 247-331.
2004: Modal Existential wh-Constructions. In: The Syntax-Semantics of Balkan Languages, O. Tomic, ed.,
John Benjamins.
2005: Relative clause constructions with a post-copular gap (with Manfred Krifka). In On Space and
Time in Language, M. Coene and L. Tasmovski, eds., Clusium, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
2006a: Reply to Bhatt & Pancheva’s ‘Late merger of degree clauses’: The irrelevance of
(non-)conservativity, Linguistic Inquiry 37, 3.
2006b: An Amalgam and its puzzles, In 40 or 60 puzzles for Manfred Krifka (Festschrift), Hans-Martin
Gaertner, ed., website of the Zentrum fuer Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin.
2007a (with Julia Horvath & Helen Trugman): DegPs as adjuncts and the Head Final Filter. Bucharest
Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. VIII, No. 1, A. Cornilescu ed., Univ. of Bucharest Press.
2007b: 'Direct' versus 'indirect' approaches to Transparent Free Relatives. Festschrift for Alexandra
Cornilescu on her 60th birthday, G. Alboiu, A. Avram, L. Avram & D. Isaac eds., University of Bucharest
Press.
2007c: (with Manfred Krifka): The gifted mathematician that you claim to be:
Equational Intensional 'Reconstruction' Relatives, Linguistics & Philosophy 30, 4.
2008: (with Fred Landman): Internally headed relative constructions in Japanese. Submitted to
The Journal of East Asian Linguistics.
To appear: Andrew amalgams, their properties, and a suggested analysis. Festive issue of Snippets, derived
from Manfred Krifka's 2006 Festschrift.
To appear: On the pre-theoretical notion ``phrasal head’’: Ignoring the left periphery is always at your own
risk. In: Interface properties: edges, heads and projections, Anna-Maria di Sciullo and Virginia Hill
(eds.), John Benjamins.
Reviews:
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Yehiel Hayon, Relativization in Hebrew: A transformational approach (1973). In Foundations of
Language 13, 1975.
Noam Chomsky, Essays on Form and Interpretation (1977). In Journal of Linguistics 15, 1979.
Brian Joseph, The loss of the infinitive in the Balkans (Cambridge University Press 1983). In
The Mediterranean Language Review 1989.
Graham Mallinson, Romanian (1986). In Linguistics 26, 1988.
Dorit D. Ravid, Language change in child and adult Hebrew; a psycholinguistic perspective
(Oxford University Press 1995). In Journal of Pragmatics 26, 1996.
Asa Kasher ed., The Chomskyan Turn (Blackwell 1991). In Journal of Pragmatics 26, 1997.
Virginia Motapanyane, ed., Comparative Studies in Romanian Syntax (North Holland Linguistic Series 58).
Lingua 112, 2002.
Doctoral students:
Sharon Armon-Lotem The minimalist child: Parameters and functional heads in the acquisition
of Hebrew (with Dr. Julia Horvath; 1993-96)
Adam Bernat: The problem of the suffix re- in Latin verbs (1993-99).
Helen Trugman (with distinction): The Internal Syntax of Russian DPs (1999 -- 2004)
Master students:
Shlomo Sadeh: Isolating versus integrating relativization in Hebrew – Universal and language specific
Strategies (with Dr. David Stein; 1976-78).
Sharon Armon-Lotem: Case theory and obligatory verb movement (with Dr. Julia Horvath; 1988-90)
Manuela Scheines Rotstein: Apropro a theory of pro within the Barriers framework (with Prof. Tanya
Reinhart; 1989-91).
Ilana Wartemberg: Iteration and stacking of modifiers in Japanese – A comparison with English,
German and Turkish.
Uli Levy: The adnominal adjective in French with special focus on pre-nominal position – A syntactic
approach (199 )
Shai Cohen Locative and path-defining prepositions, and adverbial modification of verbs of movement
(with Fred Landman; 1998 -- )
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