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Dr. Craig Sailor

Assistant Professor (Linguistics)
      
Profile Photo

Dr. Craig Sailor

Assistant Professor (Linguistics)

 CRAIG.SAILOR@tcd.ie

 


  LINGUISTICS
Details Date
Postgraduate admissions assessor (MPhil in Linguistics), Trinity College Dublin 2022
Departmental Colloquium series organizer, University of Tromsø 2018-2020
Postgraduate admissions assessor (MPhil in Linguistics), University of Cambridge 2017
President, Linguistics Graduate Student Association, University of Kansas 2005-2007
President, Graduate Linguistics Circle, UCLA 2009-2010
Personal Tutor to ca. 35 undergraduates, University of Edinburgh 2020-2022
Minimalism and the syntax-phonology interface in, editor(s)Evelina Leivada and Kleanthes Grohmann , The Cambridge Handbook of Minimalism and its Applications, Cambridge University Press, 2026, [Heather Newell, Craig Sailor], Book Chapter, IN_PRESS
Tag questions in, editor(s)Regine Eckardt, George Walkden, and Nicole Dehé , The Oxford Handbook of Non-Canonical Questions, Oxford University Press, 2026, [Craig Sailor], Book Chapter, IN_PRESS
Craig Sailor, Tag questions in and around Manipur: A microtypology, 59th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE 59), Osnabrück University, Germany, 26 - 29 August 2026, 2026, Conference Paper, ACCEPTED
Valentina Colasanti and Craig Sailor, Some Formal Properties of Gestural Polar Response Markers, Linguistics Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 2025 Annual Meeting, University of Suffolk, UK, 3-5 September 2025, 2025, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
Craig Sailor, Notes on mixed-modality expressions, Formal Linguistic Approaches to Multimodality (FLAMM), Trinity College Dublin, December 2025, 2025, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text
Byron Ahn and Sunwoo Jeong and Craig Sailor, Systematic 'stray' focus stress in English? ApparentLY!, Proceedings of the 39th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 39), West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL), April 2021, edited by Robert Autry, Gabriela de la Cruz Sanchez, Luis A. Irizarry Figueroa, Kristina Mihajlovic, Tianyi Ni, Ryan Walter Smith, and Heidi Harley , 1, Cascadilla, 2024, pp21 - 31, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
James Griffiths and Craig Sailor, Acceptability judgment experiments on PPs with gaps in, Linguistic Evidence 2024, University of Potsdam, 23 February, 2024, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
Craig Sailor and Gary Thoms, From restructuring verbs to exhortative particles: A Scots case study, 32nd Colloquium on Generative Grammar (CGG 32), University of the Basque Country, April, 2023, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
The morphophonology of ellipsis: Evidence for Segregated Transfer in, editor(s)Anikó Lipták and Güliz Günes , The Derivational Timing of Ellipsis, Oxford University Press, 2022, pp225 - 252, [Craig Sailor], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED  DOI
Craig Sailor, Ellipsis in a modular perspective, The 45th Generative Linguistics in the Old World (GLOW 45) general colloquium, Queen Mary University of London, April, 2022, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
  

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Craig Sailor, A modular theory of elliptical silence, Linguistics talks series, Université du Québec à Montréal, January, 2024, Invited Talk, PRESENTED
Craig Sailor, A conceptual argument for ellipsis as null exponence, Linguistics talks series, Princeton University, March, 2023, Invited Talk, PRESENTED
Craig Sailor, Ellipsis as evidence for the Phase Impenetrability Condition, Word Structure Research Group, Montreal, February, 2023, Invited Talk, PRESENTED
Heather Newell, Craig Sailor, Inclusiveness, the interface, and the Prosodic Hierarchy, Penn State Morphology & Syntax Syndicate, Penn State University, December, 2022, Invited Talk, PRESENTED
James Griffiths and Craig Sailor, Probing the structure of complex possessive PPs in British English: Some experimental results, Departmental Colloquium in Linguistics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, November, 2021, Invited Talk, PRESENTED
Craig Sailor, Ellipsis isn't deletion at PF, You're on mute: NYU Seminar on Ellipsis, NYU, October, 2021, Invited Talk, PRESENTED
Craig Sailor, When silence takes scope: A vulgar argument for null operators in English innovative V2, AcqVA colloquium series, NTNU, April, 2021, Invited Talk, PRESENTED
Byron Ahn, Sunwoo Jeong, and Craig Sailor, Emphatic weak certainty in English: Focus at the syntax-semantics/-phonology interfaces, Princeton Symposium on Syntactic Theory (PSST) 3, Princeton University, March, 2021, Invited Talk, PRESENTED
Craig Sailor, Ellipsis in a modular perspective, SyntaxLab, University of Cambridge, March, 2021, Invited Talk, PRESENTED
Craig Sailor, Segregated Transfer of ellipsis sites: Evidence from Taiwanese, A symposium by Team Stowell: in honor of Tim Stowell, University of Greenwich, October, 2019, Invited Talk, PRESENTED

  


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My research is primarily in linguistic theory, with an emphasis on syntax and its interfaces with other parts of grammar (morphology, phonology, and semantics). As a generative linguist, I adopt the internalist position that the uniquely human capacity for language is an innate part of our cognitive system, so uncovering its formal properties (via the languages that express it) can uncover formal properties of cognition. I'm particularly interested in how abstract syntactic structures get externalized (in any modality). Much of my research in this vein deals with the phenomenon of ellipsis: the non-pronunciation of syntactic constituents in certain predictable contexts. It appears to be a case of syntax telling phonology how to do its job, and studying such cases carefully can reveal a lot about how these two modules 'talk' to each other. But any good theory needs an empirical database against which it can be measured, so a secondary aspect of my work involves comparative syntax---both from a broad cross-linguistic perspective, and from a narrow cross-dialectal one. I'm particularly interested in syntactic variation across dialects of English. Much of my most recent work in this area aims to show how dialectal variation -- specifically, the distribution of particular syntactic phenomena across dialects -- can provide a window into recent and ongoing syntactic change. If you're interested in doing a PhD on topics such as these, feel free to send me an email.