David M. Perlmutter

David Michael Perlmutter (born 28 October 1938) is an American linguist and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, San Diego.^[4] He served as president of the Linguistic Society of America in 2000.^[6] He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013.^[7]

Perlmutter is best known as co-founder, with Paul Postal, of relational grammar, a syntactic framework that treats grammatical relations such as subject and object as primitive notions rather than as derivatives of phrase structure.^[7]

Perlmutter received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968 under the supervision of Noam Chomsky; his dissertation was titled Deep and surface constraints in syntax.^[2] He joined the faculty at the University of California, San Diego in 1977.^[3]

His Ph.D. dissertation was later published as a book: Deep and Surface Structure Constraints in Syntax (1971).^[8]

With Paul Postal, Perlmutter developed relational grammar (RG), a framework that treats grammatical relations (such as subject, direct object, and indirect object) as core theoretical constructs rather than as configurations derived from phrase structure.^[7] The approach was developed and presented in early form in RG lectures at the 1974 LSA Summer Linguistic Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.^[9]

Perlmutter edited Studies in Relational Grammar 1 (1983) and co-edited (with Carol Rosen) Studies in Relational Grammar 2 (1984), which developed and applied RG analyses across a wide range of languages.^[10][11]

Perlmutter's paper "Impersonal Passives and the Unaccusative Hypothesis", presented at the 1978 Berkeley Linguistics Society meeting, is often cited as an early published statement of the Unaccusative Hypothesis.^[9] In the paper's acknowledgements, Perlmutter states that the hypothesis itself was developed in joint work with Paul Postal.^[9] A footnote credits Geoffrey Pullum with the terms unaccusative and unergative.^[9]

The hypothesis distinguishes two subclasses of intransitive verbs: unaccusative verbs (whose single argument patterns like an underlying direct object) and unergative verbs (whose single argument patterns like an underlying subject).^[9] It has been applied to phenomena including impersonal passives, auxiliary selection, and participial constructions across typologically diverse languages.^[9] The distinction was later incorporated into multiple syntactic frameworks, including work in Government and Binding and Lexical Functional Grammar, and has been extensively discussed at the interface of syntax and lexical semantics.^[12]

Perlmutter contributed to sign language phonology, including arguments that American Sign Language (ASL) exhibits syllable-like organisation.^[7] With Carol Padden, he published "American Sign Language and the Architecture of Phonological Theory" (1987), analysing interactions between morphological and phonological processes in ASL.^[13]

His paper "Sonority and Syllable Structure in American Sign Language" (1992) proposed a moraic approach to ASL syllable structure and explored analogies between movement/position contrasts and vowel/consonant contrasts in spoken-language phonology.^[14]

Perlmutter was known for a problem-centred teaching style that emphasised discovery and explicit argumentation, including systematic comparison of competing analyses (often framed as "Hypothesis A" vs. "Hypothesis B").^[15]

This approach was adopted and extended by his students and colleagues at various institutions, including Jorge Hankamer at the University of California, Santa Cruz.^[15]

Perlmutter co-authored with Scott Soames a textbook entitled Syntactic Argumentation and the Structure of English (1979).^[16]

• Guggenheim Fellowship (1977)^[5]
• President, Linguistic Society of America (2000)^[6]
• Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2013)^[7]

• Perlmutter, David M. (1971). Deep and Surface Structure Constraints in Syntax. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
• Soames, Scott; Perlmutter, David M. (1979). Syntactic Argumentation and the Structure of English. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-03833-2.
• Perlmutter, David M., ed. (1983). Studies in Relational Grammar 1. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-66052-3.
• Perlmutter, David M.; Rosen, Carol, eds. (1984). Studies in Relational Grammar 2. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-66051-6.

• Perlmutter, David M. (1970). "Surface Structure Constraints in Syntax". Linguistic Inquiry. 1 (2): 187–255.
• Perlmutter, David M. (1978). "Impersonal Passives and the Unaccusative Hypothesis". Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. 4: 157–189. doi:10.3765/bls.v4i0.2198.
• Padden, Carol A.; Perlmutter, David M. (1987). "American Sign Language and the architecture of phonological theory". Natural Language & Linguistic Theory. 5 (3): 335–375. doi:10.1007/BF00134553. S2CID 121355805.
• Perlmutter, David M. (1992). "Sonority and Syllable Structure in American Sign Language". Linguistic Inquiry. 23 (3): 407–442. JSTOR 4178779.

• Gerdts, Donna B.; Moore, John C.; Polinsky, Maria, eds. (2010). Hypothesis A / Hypothesis B: Linguistic Explorations in Honor of David M. Perlmutter. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-63356-7. Includes Perlmutter's autobiographical essay "My Path in Linguistics".

• "David Perlmutter". Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny. Retrieved 2 January 2026.
• "UCSD Profiles page: David Perlmutter". University of California, San Diego. Retrieved 2 January 2026.

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