Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Aug 5, 2026

Alec Marantz

Alec Marantz is an American linguist and researcher in the fields of syntax, morphology, and neurolinguistics.

Last revised
Aug 5, 2026
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Alec Marantz
Born (1959-01-31) January 31, 1959
Known forDistributed morphology
Academic background
Alma materMIT, Oberlin College
Noam Chomsky
Academic work
DisciplineLinguistics
InstitutionsNew York University, MIT, UNC-Chapel Hill
Doctoral students
Heidi Harley
Main interests
Generative grammar, morphology, syntax, neurolinguistics

Alec Marantz (born January 31, 1959) is an American linguist and researcher in the fields of syntax, morphology, and neurolinguistics.

Until 2007, he was Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Research Director of KIT/MIT MEG Joint Research Lab. He has been working at New York University since 2007,1 and became Silver Professor of Linguistics and Psychology in 2019.2

Since the 1980s Marantz has made significant contributions to syntactic theory, especially regarding the structural representation of syntactic arguments, and the semantic and morphological implications of this representation. In the early 1990s Marantz proposed (together with Morris Halle) a theory of architecture of grammar known as Distributed Morphology. More recently, he has been using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to study human language processing, particularly morphology and the mental lexicon.

References

References

  1. "Alec Marantz". as.nyu.edu. Retrieved February 26, 2025.
  2. "Alec Marantz". as.nyu.edu. Retrieved February 26, 2025.

Marantz's approach to linguistic theory is characterized by its emphasis on the empirical base of linguistics, including (but not necessarily limited to) evidence from native-speaker intuitions, child language, language processing, and the neural organization of language.

External links