Rate My Professor David Pesetsky

David Pesetsky is the Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics and Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He previously served as Head of the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. Pesetsky received a B.A. in linguistics from Yale University in 1977 and a Ph.D. in linguistics from MIT in 1982. Prior to joining the MIT faculty in 1988, he taught at the University of Southern California and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Pesetsky specializes in syntax, the study of the laws governing how sentences are composed from their constituent parts across languages. His research has also addressed morphology, phonology, language acquisition, the interaction of syntax with semantics, and the relation between linguistic syntax and the syntax of tonal music. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America. Pesetsky has authored books and numerous articles within the framework of generative grammar, including work on wh-movement, argument structure, grammatical case, and the structure of Russian. He has supervised doctoral students and contributed to debates in the field, such as critiques of claims regarding the Pirahã language.