Niko Webster, Ph.D. (he/him/his)
Hello, and welcome! I am a theoretical syntactician who studies the syntax and semantics of argument structure, verb decomposition, and locality. I am captivated primarily by the following research questions:
- What are the real grammatical objects or mechanisms that comprise the human linguistic system?
- How are these best mapped to formal representations?
- How does one argue empirically for or against the (non-)existence of a given formal object or mechanism and its hypothesized role in the grammar?
I am interested in bringing diverse sets of cross-linguistic data to bear on long-standing theoretical questions. In particular, much of my research centers empirical data from Korean, a language very near to my heart, which I have studied as a second language for over ten years. I am trained in syntactic theory and (psycho-)linguistic experimental design and execution, and I apply both areas of expertise to address questions on the nature of grammar, the building blocks it is composed of, and its formal organization.
I received my Ph.D. in Linguistics from University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) in 2026. My dissertation (Loanwords in syntax: The projection of internal arguments), advised by Ivy Sichel, conducts three in-depth investigations of Sino-Korean loanwords and the construction of complex predicates in Korean, drawing from these findings to make a number of theoretical contributions on the nature of argument structure and the role of the syntax-semantic and morpho-syntactic interfaces in constraining the possibilities of structural realization.
I received my B.A. in Linguistics from New York University (NYU) in 2019, with minors in Korean Language and Studio Art.
Contact: newebste [at] ucsc [dot] edu
저는 한국어를 약 10년 동안 배워 왔습니다. 앞으로 꾸준한 연습을 통해 제 한국어 능력을 향상시키려고 노력하고 있습니다. 한국어 문법 실수의 관한 지적과, 실력 향상을 위한 도움을 감사히 여기고 있습니다.