Educational Background

• B.A. (Honours Linguistics) McGill University, Montreal 1973
• Ph.D. University of Massachusetts at Amherst 1978
• Dissertation: A Theory of Stylistic Rules in English

Academic Positions

• 1978-1981 Sessional Lecturer, Linguistics, U. C. Los Angeles
• 1981-1982 Sloan Postdoctoral Fellow, Cog. Science, U. C. Irvine
• 1982-1989 Assistant Professor, Linguistics, Univ. of British Columbia
• 1989-1997 Associate Professor, Linguistics, Univ. of British Columbia
• 1997-present Professor, Linguistics, Univ. of British Columbia
• Nov 1998-May 2010 Medical Leave, Univ. of British Columbia

Areas of Interest

I am cited in the field in two areas: syntax and information structure. In syntax I am known mostly for my work on rightward movement, based largely in a long collaboration with my colleague and friend, Dr. Peter Culicover (Linguistics, Ohio State University). A recent reference to that work may be found in Chomsky 2004: 128 (Beyond Explanatory Adequacy). In the area of Information Structure I am known for my work on focus. Reference to my work in that area may be found in the seminal articles by Selkirk 1995 (Handbook of Phonological Theory), Rooth 1992 (Natural Language Semantics 1) and Schwarzschild 1999 (Natural Language Semantics 7), in the survey article by Krifka 1998 (MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences), and in much work of the past decade on focus. The areas that occupy me presently are (i) prosodic phonology, specifically the syntax phonology connection and relations between information structure categories (given, new, focused) and prosody, and (ii) the syntactic expression of categories of information structure, both within and across languages, including the distributional constraints imposed on context by specific syntactic configurations.

Courses Recently Taught

• LING 530 Focus and Information Structure co-taught with Henry Davis
• LING 300 Studies in Grammar (Syntax)
• LING 447 Expression of Focus in Natural Language

Selected Publications

Book Chapters

• Rochemont, Michael. "Phonological Focus and Structural Focus". The Limits of Syntax : Syntax and Semantics 29. Ed. Peter Culicover and Louise McNally. New York: Academic Press, 1998. 337 - 364.

• Rochemont, Michael and Peter Culicover. "Deriving Dependent Right Adjuncts in English". Rightward Movement. Ed. Henk van Riemsdijk, David Leblanc and Dorothee Beerman. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1997. (This chapter has been re-printed in SYNTAX: Critical Concepts vol.III, pp. 29-50, R. Frieden & H. Lasnik, eds, Routledge, London, 2006.)

• Rochemont, Michael. "Bounding Rightward A'-Dependencies". Island Constraints: Theory, Acquisition, and Processing. Ed. Helen Goodluck and Michael Rochemont. The Netherlands: Kluwer, 1992. 373 - 397.

• Goodluck, Helen and Michael Rochemont. "Island Constraints: an Introduction". Island Constraints: Theory, Acquisition, and Processing. Ed. Helen Goodluck and Michael Rochemont. The Netherlands: Kluwer, 1992. 1 - 33.

Books

• Goodluck, Helen and Michael Rochemont, ed. Island Constraints: Theory, Acquisition, and Processing. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics. the Netherlands: Kluwer, 1992. 479 pages.

• Rochemont, Michael and Peter Culicover. English Focus Constructions and the Theory of Grammar. Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 210 pages. REPRINTED 2009

• Rochemont, Michael. Focus in Generative Grammar. Studies in Generative Linguistic Analysis 4. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1986. 221 pages.

• Rochemont, Michael. A Theory of Stylistic Rules in English. Oustanding Dissertations in Linguistics. New York: Garland Press, 1985. 112 pages

Journal Articles

• Keach, C. Nikki and Michael Rochemont. "On the Syntax of Possessor Raising in Swahili". STUDIES IN AFRICAN LINGUISTICS. 23.1 (1995): 81 - 106.

• Dahl, Veronica, Fred Popowich and Michael Rochemont. "A Principled Characterization of Dislocated Phrases: Capturing Barriers with Static Discontinuity Grammars". LINGUISTICS AND PHILOSOPHY 16 (1994): 331 - 352.

• Culicover, Peter and Michael Rochemont. "Adjunct Extraction from NP and the ECP". LINGUISTIC INQUIRY. 23 (1992): 496 - 501.

• Culicover, Peter and Michael Rochemont. "Extraposition and the Complement Principle". LINGUISTIC INQUIRY. 21 (1990): 23 - 47.

• Rochemont, Michael. "Topic Islands and the Subjacency Parameter". CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LINGUISTICS-REVUE CANADIENNE DE LINGUISTIQUE. (1989): 145 - 170.

• Rochemont, Michael. "Focus in Generative Grammar". LINGUISTIC REVIEW. 4 (1986): 365 - 373.

• Horvath, Jullia and Michael Rochemont. "Pronouns in Discourse and Sentence Grammar". LINGUISTIC INQUIRY. 17 (1986): 759 - 766.

• Culicover, Peter and Michael Rochemont. "Stress and Focus in English". LANGUAGE. 59 (1983): 123 - 165.

• Rochemont, Michael. "On the Empirical Motivation of the Raising Principle". LINGUISTIC INQUIRY. 13 (1981): 150 - 154.