Alec Marantz

Silver Professor; Professor of Linguistics and Psychology

bio

Alec Marantz is a Professor of Linguistics and Psychology at NYU, which he joined in 2006 from MIT, where he had been Head of the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy and the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Linguistics. He served as Chair of the Linguistics department at NYU from 2007-2013.

Co-founder of the theory of the architecture of grammar known as Distributed Morphology, Professor Marantz is world-renowned for his work on morphology and syntax, and more recently, his work on neurolinguistics, carried out at NYU in Neuroscience of Language Lab (NeLLab), located jointly in the Departments of Linguistics and Psychology. Within NeLLab, Marantz focuses on word structure and innovative MEG (magnetoencephalography) methods for functional neuroimaging. Integrating linguistic theory and psycholinguistic models with observed neural activity in the brain, this work explores: how the ability to use natural language is implemented in the brain; how the brain mediates the most critical aspects of our communication system; and which properties of the mind/brain facilitate the seemingly effortless human processing of language. Existing research in this field is typically based on the English language. Therefore, a particularly innovative aspect of Marantz’s work is located in the NYU Abu Dhabi site of NeLLab, the lab's location in Abu Dhabi. This has a focus on speakers of Arabic, a language of special importance for the study of the neural correlates of linguistic representations and computations, as well as many other languages, such as Hindi, Greek, Hebrew, and Tagalog.

This work has resulted in an impressive list of publications in prestigious journals and marks Marantz as one of NYU’s most high profile world-class scholars in an important, cutting-edge and rapidly-developing new field.

Areas of Research/Interest

Universal Grammar, Syntax, Morphology, Language Acquisition, Neurolinguistics

Selected Publications

Marantz, Alec. Morphology Lectures: Streaming Video. Lectures at the DEC of the ENS, Paris, October, 2006

Marantz, Alec. to appear. Phases and Words

Marantz, Alec & Morris Halle. to appear. Clarifying “Blur”: Paradigms, Defaults and Inflectional Classes In A. Bachrach & A. Nevins, eds., The Bases of Inflectional Identity, OUP

Embick, David and Alec Marantz submitted. Architecture and Blocking

Embick, David and Alec Marantz. Cognitive neuroscience and the English past tense: Comments on the paper by Ullman et al. 2005, Brain and Language, 93.2, 243-247.

Marantz, Alec. Generative linguistics within the cognitive neuroscience of language. 2005, The Linguistic Review 22, 429-445 

Stockall, Linnaea and Alec Marantz.  A single route, full decomposition model of morphological complexity: MEG evidence. 2006, The Mental Lexicon 1:1

Sekihara K, Nagarajan SS, Poeppel D, Marantz  A. Asymptotic SNR of scalar and vector minimum-variance beamformers for neuromagnetic source reconstruction. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2004 Oct;51(10):1726-34.

Stockall L, Stringfellow A, Marantz  A. The precise time course of lexical activation: MEG measurements of the effects of frequency, probability, and density in lexical decision. Brain Lang. 2004 Jul-Sep;90(1-3):88-94. 

Pylkkanen L, Feintuch S, Hopkins E, Marantz  A. Neural correlates of the effects of morphological family frequency and family size: an MEG study. Cognition. 2004 Apr;91(3):B35-45. 

Sekihara K, Nagarajan SS, Poeppel D, Marantz  A. Performance of an MEG adaptive-beamformer source reconstruction technique in the presence of additive low-rank interference. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2004 Jan;51(1):90-9. 

Pylkkanen L, Marantz  A. Tracking the time course of word recognition with MEG. Trends Cogn Sci. 2003 May;7(5):187-189. 

Sekihara K, Nagarajan SS, Poeppel D, Marantz  A. Performance of an MEG adaptive-beamformer technique in the presence of correlated neural activities: effects on signal intensity and time-course estimates. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2002 Dec;49(12 Pt 2):1534-46. 

Pylkkanen L, Stringfellow A, Marantz  A. Neuromagnetic evidence for the timing of lexical activation: an MEG component sensitive to phonotactic probability but not to neighborhood density. Brain Lang. 2002 Apr-Jun;81(1-3):666-78. 

Sekihara K, Nagarajan SS, Poeppel D, Marantz  A, Miyashita Y. Application of an MEG eigenspace beamformer to reconstructing spatio-temporal activities of neural sources. Hum Brain Mapp. 2002 Apr;15(4):199-215. 

Sekihara K, Nagarajan SS, Poeppel D, Marantz  A, Miyashita Y. Reconstructing spatio-temporal activities of neural sources using an MEG vector beamformer technique. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2001 Jul;48(7):760-71. 

Phillips C, Pellathy T, Marantz  A, Yellin E, Wexler K, Poeppel D, McGinnis M, Roberts T. Auditory cortex accesses phonological categories: an MEG mismatch study. J Cogn Neurosci. 2000 Nov;12(6):1038-55. 

Embick D, Hackl M, Schaeffer J, Kelepir M, Marantz  A. A magnetoencephalographic component whose latency reflects lexical frequency. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res. 2001 Jan;10(3):345-8. 

Embick D, Marantz  A, Miyashita Y, O'Neil W, Sakai KL. A syntactic specialization for Broca's area. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2000 May 23;97(11):6150-4. 

Liu J, Higuchi M, Marantz  A, Kanwisher N. The selectivity of the occipitotemporal M170 for faces. Neuroreport. 2000 Feb 7;11(2):337-41. 

Sekihara K, Poeppel D, Marantz  A, Koizumi H, Miyashita Y. MEG spatio-temporal analysis using a covariance matrix calculated from nonaveraged multiple-epoch data. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 1999 May;46(5):515-21. 

Sekihara K, Poeppel D, Marantz  A, Koizumi H, Miyashita Y. Comparison of covariance-based and waveform-based subtraction methods in removing the interference from button-pressing finger movements. Brain Topogr. 1998 Winter;11(2):95-102. 

Sekihara K, Poeppel D, Marantz  A, Phillips C, Koizumi H, Miyashita Y. MEG covariance difference analysis: a method to extract target source activities by using task and control measurements. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 1998 Jan;45(1):87-97. 

Sekihara K, Poeppel D, Marantz  A, Koizumi H, Miyashita Y. Noise covariance incorporated MEG-MUSIC algorithm: a method for multiple-dipole estimation tolerant of the influence of background brain activity. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 1997 Sep;44(9):839-47. PMID: 9282476 

Poeppel D, Phillips C, Yellin E, Rowley HA, Roberts TP, Marantz  A. Processing of vowels in supratemporal auditory cortex. Neurosci Lett. 1997 Jan 17;221(2-3):145-8. 

Poeppel D, Yellin E, Phillips C, Roberts TP, Rowley HA, Wexler K, Marantz  A. Task-induced asymmetry of the auditory evoked M100 neuromagnetic field elicited by speech sounds. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res. 1996 Nov;4(4):231-42.