Peter Culicover is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Linguistics. He has previously served at Ohio State as the Chair of the Department of Linguistics, Director of the Center for Cognitive Science, and Associate Provost. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Linguistic Society of America. He is particularly interested in the foundations of syntactic theory and in explaining why languages, and their grammars, are the way they are.