Susana Bejar
Phone: 416-978-1760
Email: susana dot bejar at utoronto dot ca
Google Scholar: here
I'm an Associate Professor of syntax in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto.
I study inflectional systems. I'm interested in what they can tell us about syntactic atoms (features), functional structure, underlying syntactic mechanisms, and the syntax-morphology interface. I'm also interested in understanding systemic limits on cross-linguistic variation. Topics that I work on include the following:
Agreement systems
Hierarchy effects
Alignment patterns
Animacy restrictions
Licensing mechanisms
Feature theory
Copular clauses
Syntax-morphology interface
Georgian morphosyntax
Inuktitut morphosyntax
Research
Recent projects
Copular agreement systems: Locality and Domains (Principal Investigator)
Sinâni: Inuttitut on the Edge (Collaborator, PI Alana Johns)
Complexity and recursion in child language (Collaborator, PI Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux)
Recent papers
Bejar, Susana and Arsalan Kahnemuyipour. Submitted. Agreement in binominal copular clauses: Movement vs feature-relativized Agree. Papers from Move+Agree workshop. 28 ms pages.
Pérez-Leroux, Ana Teresa, Yves Roberge, Diane Massam & Susana Bejar. Accepted. Varieties of DP recursion: syntax, semantics and acquisition. 28 ms pages.
Bejar, Susana and Arsalan Kahnemuyipour. 2023. Agree and the subject of specificational clauses. Syntax. https://doi.org/10.1111/synt.12256
Bejar, Susana, Diane Massam, Ana-Teresa Pérez-Leroux and Yves Roberge. 2020. Rethinking complexity. In Bárány, A., Biberauer, T., Douglas, J., & Vikner, S. Syntactic architecture and its consequences II, pp 15-25. Language Sciences Press (http://langsci-press.org), Open Generative Syntax 9. 7 .
Bejar, Susana, Jessica Denniss, Arsalan Kahnemuyipour and Tomohiro Yokoyama. 2019 .Number Matching in Binominal Small Clauses. In Maria Arche, Antonio Fábregas, & Rafael Marín (Eds.). The Grammar of Copulas Across Languages (Vol. 73). pp 90-106. Oxford University Press.
Pérez-Leroux, Ana Teresa, Anny Castilla-Earls, Susana Bejar, Diane Massam and Tyler Peterson. 2018b. Strong continuity and children’s development of DP recursion. In Luiz Amaral, Marcus Maia, Andrew Nevins, & Tom Roeper, (Eds.). Recursion across domains. pp 296-313. Cambridge University Press.
Pérez-Leroux, Ana Teresa, Tyler Peterson, Anny Castilla-Earls, Susana Bejar, Diane Massam and Yves Roberge. 2018. Recursion and the acquisition of complex NPs. Language 94(2), 332-359.
Bejar, Susana and Arsalan Kahnemuyipour. 2018. Not all phi-features are created equal: A reply to Hartmann & Heycock (2018). Journal of Linguistics 54(3), 629-635. [Reply to H&H’s reply to Bejar & Kahnemuyipour 2017]
Bejar, Susana and Arsalan Kahnemuyipour. 2017, Non-canonical agreement in copular clauses. University of Toronto. Journal of Linguistics (2017), 1–36. DOI:10.1017/S002222671700010X
Recent talks
2023 Susana Bejar and Milan Rezac. Person and licensing in Georgian: Puzzles for Cyclic Agree. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL). May 4-6. University of California, Santa Cruz.
2023 Susana Bejar and Alana Johns. Labrador Inuttitut Causatives: The View from Non-Transitives. Poster presentation at the Workshop on Structure and Constituency in Languages of the Americas (WSCLA). April 28-30. McGill University, Montreal.
2023 Susana Bejar and Milan Rezac. Person and licensing in Georgian: Puzzles for Cyclic Agree. Colloquium on Generative Grammar (CGG 32). April 24-26. University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz.
2022. Susana Bejar and Alana Johns. Polysemy in Labrador Inuttitut Causatives. Brussels Conference on Generative Linguistics. October 6-7, 2022. Centre for Research in Syntax, Semantics and Phonology (CRISSP), KULeuven.
2022. Susana Bejar, Susanna Jararuse, Alana Johns, Christine Nochasak. Ingigganitsavut – Our Path to Move Forward. Inuit Studies Conference. Winnipeg, Manitoba.
2022. Susana Bejar, Alana Johns, Christine Nochasak. On Meaning Variance in Inuktut -tit- ‘cause/let’. Inuit Studies Conference. Winnipeg, Manitoba.
2022. Susana Bejar and Arsalan Kahnemuiypour. Failing low, succeeding high: Agreement with specificational subjects. Workshop on copular sentences: Predication, specification and equation. June 14, 2022. Paris, France: CNRS.
2021. Susana Bejar and Arsalan Kahnemuiypour. Agreement in binominal copular clauses: Movement vs feature-relativized Agree. Workshop on Move and Agree. McGill University and UBC. June 2, 2021.
2020. Susana Bejar. Feature theory. Syntax Lab, McMaster University, Dept of Linguistics and Languages. November 4, 2020.
2019. Susana Bejar. How to be a picky probe. Workshop on Thirty Million Theories of Syntactic Features. CASTL (The Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics). Tromso, Norway. May 27, 2019.
2018. Susana Bejar. The Syntax of Georgian Pseudoclefts. Poster presentation at The South Caucasian Chalk Circle – 2, September 14, 2018. Ilia University, Tbilisi, Georgia.
2018. Susana Bejar and Arsalan Kahnemuyipour. When intensional subjects control agreement. Canadian Linguistics Association Annual Meeting. May 31, 2018. University of Regina.
2018. Susana Bejar. Person restrictions in copular complements. Cornell Syntax Circle Workshop, Ithaca NY, Apr 13 2018.
2018. Susana Bejar. Copular Agreement Systems, Cornell University Linguistics Colloquium, Ithaca, NY, Apr 12, 2018.
2018. Susana Bejar. Phi-Syntax and PF-Legibility, Princeton Symposium on Syntactic Theory, Princeton, NJ, Apr 7, 2018.
2018. Susana Bejar. Person, agree and derived predicates. McGill University Linguistics Colloquium, Montreal, Feb 23, 2018.
2018. Susana Bejar, Diane Massam, Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux & Yves Roberge. Syntactic recursion: Theory and acquisition. Canadian Linguistic Association Annual Meeting. May 31, 2018. University of Regina, Regina.
2017. Susana Bejar. Ineffable person in copular complements. Workshop on Resolving Conflict Across Borders. Dubrovnik, Croatia. Oct 21, 2017.
2017. Susana Bejar. Ineffable Person in Copular Contexts: Agreement vs Identity. Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto-Hamilton (MOTH) Workshop on Syntax. Plenary talk. 8 April 2017. McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.
2017. Susana Bejar and Arsalan Kahnemuyipour. Number matching under ellipsis: What counts? Canadian Linguistics Association Annual Meeting. May 27, 2017. Ryerson University, Toronto.
2016. Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux, Tyler Peterson, Susana Bejar, Anny Castilla-Earls, Diane Massam and Yves Roberge. Nominal Reference, Modification and Complex NPs. Complexity in Acquisition Workshop. May 24, 2016. University of Toronto.
Teaching
Undergraduate
LIN102 Introduction to Linguistics: Sentence Structure and meaning
LIN331 Syntactic Theory
LIN333 Morphological Patterns in Language
LIN432 Advanced Morphology
LIN481 Analysis & Argumentation
Graduate
LIN1131 Introduction to Syntactic Theory
LIN1133 Advanced Morphology
LIN1181 Analysis & Argumentation (now LIN1103)
LIN123X Advanced Syntax
Supervision
If you are interested in topics that connect with my research program you are welcome to get in touch.
Current PhD students
Kaz Bamba. Person restrictions and sentence final particles in Japanese. (In progress)
Virgilio Partida. Split Intransitivity in Mazahua. (In progress
Zoe McKenzie. Contemporal adjunct clauses in Labrador Inuttut. (In progress)
Completed Phd theses
Tomohiro Yokoyama. 2019. Faultless derivations and unconditional interfaces.
Clarissa Forbes. 2018. Persistent ergativity: Agreement and splits in Tsimshianic.