Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
Rethinking Comparative Syntax (ReCoS)
Professor Ian Roberts
Ian Roberts is the Principal Investigator on the ReCoS project. He specialises in comparative and historical syntax, using and developing the 'principles and parameters' approach to cross-linguistic variation. In this context, he has worked on the synchronic and diachronic syntax of a wide range of Germanic, Romance and Celtic languages. He has published four research monographs in this field: The Representation of Implicit and Dethematised Subjects (1987); Verbs and Diachronic Syntax (1993); Syntactic Change (2003) with A. Roussou, and Principles and Parameters in a VSO Language: A Case Study in Welsh (2005), as well as numerous articles and a textbook Comparative Syntax (1996). His most recent publications are Diachronic Syntax (2007) and a six-volume edited collection Comparative Grammar: Critical Concepts (2007).
Dr Theresa Biberauer
Theresa Biberauer is the project's Senior Research Associate. She specialises in theoretical, comparative and historical syntax, with interface, typological, contact and acquisition issues also a focus of interest. To date, much of her research has centred on the clause structure of the Germanic languages, with the peculiar patterns of variation and change exhibited by Afrikaans forming the heart of her doctoral work, and various aspects of the diachrony of English and other Germanic languages having been a major research focus since the completion of that Ph.D. in 2003. She was previously (2002-2007) the Research Associate on an AHRC-funded project Null subjects and the structure of parametric theory, also involving Ian Roberts, David Willis and Anders Holmberg (University of Newcastle), and the Senior Research Associate on a further AHRC-funded project (October 2007-March 2011) investigating Structure and Linearization in Disharmonic Word Orders. The project once again involved both a Cambridge- and a Newcastle-based research team: Ian Roberts and Theresa Biberauer (Cambridge), and Anders Holmberg and Michelle Sheehan (Newcastle). Theresa is a Fellow of Churchill College and also holds an honorary Associate Professorship at her South African alma mater, Stellenbosch University.
Dr Michelle Sheehan
Michelle Sheehan is a research associate on the project. She is particularly interested in null arguments, alignment, word order, the syntax-semantics interface and the architecture of grammar. She is co-author of the Cambridge University Press volume Parametric Variation: Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory and has published papers on clausal-nominal parallels, word order (including extraposition and ‘free’ inversion), linearization, island effects, labelling and language contact. She is also a co-editor of the journal Iberia.
Dr Jenneke van der Wal
Jenneke van der Wal is a research associate on the project, working on discourse configurationality. Her main research interests include Bantu languages, the interface between syntax and information structure, and synchronic and diachronic morphosyntax. Her dissertation studied word order and information structure in Makhuwa (a Bantu language spoken in Mozambique), and she has also worked on the conjoint and disjoint verb forms in southern and eastern Bantu languages, the link between Mauritian Creole and Mozambican Bantu languages (with Tonjes Veenstra), the fascinating functions of demonstratives in Makhuwa, grammaticalisation of focus constructions (with Maud Devos and Jacky Maniacky), and agreement in subject inversion.
András Bárány
András is a research assistant on the project, focusing on the question of how different languages realise subjects and direct objects with varying degrees of definiteness, topicality, etc. A starting point for this research project was a comparative analysis of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Hungarian and other languages. A possible goal of this project will be to try and develop a formal analysis of DOM that links to the properties of the parameter hierarchies established by ReCoS. András is further interested in formal semantics, morphology and their relation to each other as well as statistical and computational linguistics.
He studied General and Finno-Ugric linguistics at the University of Vienna before joining ReCoS in Cambridge and speaks Hungarian, German, English, Spanish and some French.
Tim Bazalgette
Tim Bazalgette is a research assistant on the project, working for the PhD under the title "Discourse Macroparameters and the Borer-Chomsky Conjecture." He is examining in the syntactic encoding of information structure, especially in signed languages, where he is currently investigating focus-doubling phenomena. He has previously worked on wh-internal structure and its relation to discourse pro-drop, and is generally interested in lexicocentric approches to parametric theory.
Alison Biggs
Alison is a research assistant on the project working on the alignment hierarchy. Her Ph.D looks at A-movement, particularly passivisation, and its interaction with case and agreement. More broadly her research interests include theoretical and comparative syntax, dialectal variation, language acquisition, and typology. She is working on Mandarin, British English dialects, and Kurmanji (Kurdish).
Jessica Brown
Jessica Brown is a research assistant on the project, currently working on deficiency, in particular on restructuring.
Georg Höhn
Georg is a research assistant on the project, working on null arguments. His main linguistic research interests are in syntax, particularly the nominal domain, morphological theory and the morphosyntax-phonology interface. Previous work has dealt with nominal structure and modification in Basque and the role of nominal structure in apparent subject-verb agreement mismatches in Spanish, Greek and other languages (a phenomenon sometimes called "unagreement"). Georg speaks German, English, Modern Greek and Russian and has basic knowledge of Brazilian Portuguese, Ancient Greek and Latin. His theoretical interests furthermore include Basque as well as the Semitic (Arabic, Amharic) and Bantu languages.
Professor Anders Holmberg
Anders Holmberg will be the project's external consultant from 2013 onwards.
