Publications
2018. “ULTRA: Universal Grammar as a Universal Parser.” Invited paper for Frontiers In Psychology, section Language Sciences, Research Topic Approaches to Language: Data, Theory, and Explanation. Edited by Angel Gallego and Aritz Irurtzun. Online.
2018. David P. Medeiros & Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini. “The Golden Phrase: Steps to the Physics of Language.” In Gallego, Angel J. and Roger Martin, eds., Language, Syntax, and the Natural Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 333-350. PDF
2016. David P. Medeiros, Thomas G. Bever & Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini. “Many important language universals are not reducible to processing or cognition.” Reply to Christianen, Morten H., and Nick Chater, “The Now-or-Never Bottleneck: A Fundamental Constraint on Language.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39 (2016) 42-43. PDF
2012. Economy of Command. PhD Dissertation, University of Arizona Linguistics Department. PDF
2008. “Optimal growth in phrase structure.” Biolinguistics 2.2-3: 152-195. PDF
2006. Carnie, Andrew & David Medeiros. Syntax: Instructor’s Handbook. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
2005. Carnie, Andrew & David Medeiros. “Tree maximization and the Extended Projection Principle.” Coyote Working Papers in Linguistics 14: 51-55. PDF
Presentations
2018. “A unified stack-sorting account of Universal 20 and the Final-Over-Final Constraint.” Western Conference in Linguistics, Fresno, CA, November 30. PDF
2017. “ULTRA: Universal Grammar as universal parser.” Arizona Linguistics Circle 11, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, October 21.
2017. “Universal Grammar, universal parsing, and Universal 20.” Department of Spanish and Portuguese Linguistics Colloquium, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, September 15.
2017. “One grammar, many orders: The ULTRA Model.” Linguistics Department Colloquium, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, April 28.
2017. “ULTRA and the Physics of Language.” Physics of Language Workshop, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, April 22.
2017. “The ULTRA Model and Universal 20.” (Poster, with Ryan Walter Smith) Linguistic Society of America, Austin, TX, Jan 6. PDF
2016. “ULTRA: Lexical items as processes, not atoms; Syntax as timing, not geometry.” Plenary talk, Linguistics Conference at the University of Georgia-Athens, Oct 7. PPTX
2016. “Queue Left, Stack-sort Right: Syntactic structure without Merge.” Physics of Language Symposium, Sophia University, Tokyo, March 5. PDF
2012. “Steps to the Physics of Language.” with Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini. Arizona State University Cognitive Science Conclave, Tempe, AZ, Dec 8.
2012. “Generalized Syntactic Recurrence; Growth, Dimensionality, and Factorization.”Arizona State University/University of Arizona Linguistics Symposium, Tucson, AZ, Apr 21. PDF
2012. “Movement as tree-balancing: an account of Greenberg’s Universal 20.” Linguistic Society of America, Portland, OR, Jan 7. PDF
2011. “X-bar Structure and the Golden String.” Workshop on Complex Systems in Linguistics, University of Southampton, UK, September 5. PDF
2010. “Displacement as structural optimization: motivating roll-up movement.”Arizona Linguistics Circle 4, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, October 17. PDF
2008. “Projection as an epiphenomenon of optimal packing.” Ways of Structure Building, University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, November 14. PDF
2008. “Economy of command: X-Bar and displacement as optimal packing solutions.” Arizona Linguistics Circle Conference 2, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ November 1.
2006.“A labeling account of pied-piping with inversion.” Linguistic Society of America, Albuquerque, NM, January 6. PDF