Dr. Murphy's work seeks to further our understanding of syntactic theory by investigating empirical phenomena from a wide range of typologically diverse languages, including English, German, Icelandic, Mandarin Chinese, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Asante Twi, among others. Some of his recent research topics include movement, agreement, ellipsis, and the interfaces with morphology and phonology. He has also worked on developing optimality-theoretic approaches to syntax. Dr. Murphy received his PhD from Leipzig University in 2017 and has been teaching at The University of Chicago since 2020. He has also studied at the Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Manchester.
Recent Publications
- Korsah, S. & A. Murphy (to appear) Tonal Reflexes of Movement in Asante Twi. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory.
- Murphy, A. (2019) Resolving conflicts with violable constraints: On the cross-modular parallelism of repairs. Glossa 4(1). 9. 1-39.
- Murphy, A. & Z. Puškar (2018) Closest conjunct agreement is an illusion. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 36(4). 1207-1261.
- Murphy, A. (2018) Pronominal inflection and NP ellipsis in German. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 21(3). 327-379.
- Murphy, A. (2017) Toward a unified theory of wh-in-situ and islands. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 26(2). 189-231.
2019-2020 Course Offerings
Syntactic Analysis II (LING 30202)
This course is a continuation of Syntax I. The emphasis will be on A'-movement and ellipsis operations within the framework of Principles and Parameters and the Minimalist Program. Although we will examine different types of movement and ellipsis constructions, as well as their interactions, the objective will be to understand to what extent we can develop a general theory of syntax. The course will have a strong cross-linguistic aspect to it, examining data from Irish, Austronesian languages, Mayan languages, Wolof, Russian, Romance, Germanic, and others. The topics will include wh-movement in questions, relative clauses, and other constructions, islands and other constraints on movement, sentence fragments (sluicing, split questions), VP-ellipsis, and gapping.