Lasnik's dissertation was on the syntax of English
negation. In Binding Theory, Lasnik has been a prominent advocate of an approach to syntactic binding which places an emphasis on semantic
reference. He takes the possibility of coreference and disjoint reference to be the targets of explanation in
Binding Theory, rather than mere co-indexation. This has led to an incorporation of
epithets in formal analyses of anaphora. He has written extensively on
ellipsis phenomena, including sluicing, pseudogapping, and VP-ellipsis. He has advocated a view where the rules of syntax may generate structures which violate syntactic constraints (such as
syntactic islands), as long as later operations amend the offending material (at least for some syntactic constraints, such as
Subjacency, but not others, like the
Empty Category Principle). ==External links==