Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
Rethinking Comparative Syntax (ReCoS)
Structure and Linearisation in Disharmonic Word Orders (Newcastle University and University of Cambridge)
This project investigates the ramifications of a generalization hypothesized to have universal validity: A head-final phrase cannot immediately dominate a head-initial phrase (the Final-over-Final Constraint: FOFC). In Greenbergian typology and in Principles-and-Parameters (P&P) theory the existence of grammars mixing head-final and head-initial orders poses a problem, as they are exceptions to the Greenbergian word order universals and to the directionality parameters of P&P theory. FOFC, however, is a generalization about mixed or ‘disharmonic’ systems, which, when properly formulated, makes predictions about disharmonic orders, allowing some, excluding others. Thereby it also makes predictions about language change.
Null Subjects and The Structure of Parametric Theory (Newcastle University and University of Cambridge)
This project investigates the null-subject parameter in order to establish whether the correlations that it has been claimed to account for can be explained in terms of parameter interaction. The aim is to develop a typology of linguistic correlations and a theory of parameter interaction.
ALEPH - Atomic Linguistic Elements of Phi (Queen Mary, University of London)
Research into phi-features (especially, person and number) has seen a recent explosion of interest both in typology and theoretical linguistics (morphology, semantics and syntax). The purpose of ALEPH is to bring together the empirical insights of these varied domains and to propose a unified inventory of person and number features that respects the different theoretical demands of syntax, semantics and morphology, whilst at the same time deriving the core typological generalizations without recourse to arbitrary stipulations.
The core idea is to develop a theory of the fundamental units (atoms) that human languages use in talking about person and number categories, and then to use this theory to make, and investigate, predictions about (i) how these categories are morphologically realized in a range of languages and (ii) they are interpreted.
Comparative syntax. Layers of structure and the cartography project (Ghent University)
This project explores the cartographic approach to syntax, whose aim it is to decompose the sentence in its primitive syntactic components. The current research project has three main lines of enquiry. A first project line deals with the syntax of the left periphery of the clause, i.e. the constituents to the left of the subject position. The goal is to determine to what extent the left periphery of the clause may be structurally deficient and whether the deficiency can be derived from independent principles of the grammar. The second line of the project examines the demarcation of the left periphery (‘CP’) and the core sentential domain (‘TP’) in the light of recent proposals in cartographic approaches and raises the question of the status of the subject position in relation to CP and TP. The third strand of research examines to what extent the internal structure of the nominal projection can be assimilated to that of the clause.
Splitting and clustering grammatical information (Leiden University)
This project focuses on a striking parallelism between two macro-groups of languages: southern Italian (Romance) dialects and the so-called split-ergative languages, like Basque, Georgian, Dyirbal, Hindi/Urdu, and many others. Surprisingly, these two groups of languages, which have otherwise very little in common, both organize the grammatical material in a very peculiar fashion, by grouping some elements together to the exclusion of others.
Syntactic Atlas of Welsh Dialects (University of Cambridge, Newcastle University, and University of Essex)
The Syntactic Atlas of Welsh Dialects is a project to establish the extent of variation in the syntax of present-day Welsh, including age-related variation and variation due to linguistic background, as well as geogrpahical variation. Specifically, its aims are to establish the distribution of major syntactic variants in Welsh using a systematic methodology, to establish patterns of change via age-related variation, to examine the effects of language revitalisation on the syntax of Welsh, to provide material for further analysis of Welsh syntax in any framework, and to provide a repository of material available for researchers and the general public interested in any kind of variation within the Welsh language as spoken today.
The development of negation in the languages of Europe (University of Cambridge)
Many languages in central northwestern Europe (Breton, Dutch, English, French, German, Mainland Scandinavian, Welsh) have undergone similar changes in the expression of negation. Two interrelated developments are common:
(i) preverbal negation markers are 'strengthened' and eventually replaced by newly innovated postverbal markers (Jespersen's Cycle)
(ii) indefinite pronouns used as negative polarity items acquire an inherently negative meaning and become negative quantifiers (e.g. French personne 'anyone' > 'no one')
These changes are also frequent in non-European (e.g. Niger-Congo) languages, yet European languages outside this zone (West Slavonic, Goidelic Celtic) have been conservative in their development of negation, maintaining a preverbal clitic as the main marker of sentential negation.
This project aims to answer a number of research questions that arise from these observations: Are the innovatism of central northwestern Europe and the conservatism of the rest of Europe coincidental, or the result of language contact, or both? What are the interactions between these and other concomitant syntactic changes? How can we account for the apparent 'naturalness' of the changes observed? What implications do these patterns have for syntactic theory and models of language change? Negation and language change affecting it raise issues for historical and formal linguistics on a more general scale.
The Syntax of Yes and No (Newcastle University)
The aim is to accomplish two related tasks: (a) a survey of forms of answers, affirmative as well as negative, to polar questions (yes/no-questions) in the languages of the world, and (b) an investigation of the syntactic structure of the different types of answers encountered: What do they have in common, how do they differ?
The Uniformity of linguistic variation: subject-predicate relations (Utrecht University)
Although the languages of the world may appear incredibly diverse to a casual observer, a closer look reveals that they are remarkably similar at the deeper level of grammar. Compared to the infinite variety of how languages could construct their sentences, the underlying syntax tends to cluster in limited areas of the available space of possibilities. This underlying sameness has led to the concept of Universal Grammar (UG), a set of grammatical properties underlying all languages. UG consists of properties which are invariably the same for each language, Principles. Other properties, Parameters, have to be set in one of a limited number of ways. Since the set of parameters and the range of options to fix them are restricted in the same way for all languages, variation between languages is also systematically limited. This project focuses on one of the core issues in linguistic variation research: the question of whether macrovariation (variation between unrelated languages, e.g. Japanese vs. Swahili), microvariation (variation between related languages/dialects, e.g. Norwegian vs. Icelandic) and diachronic change (variation between diachronic stages of a language Middle Dutch vs. Old Dutch) can be reduced to the same parameters. The specific research topic of this project is the variation in the expression of subject-predicate relations, a core relation in human language. In a sentence such as He dances, the predicate dance describes a property of the subject He. Surprisingly, languages differ in their expression of this basic relation. Even more surprising is that the Dutch languages (including Dutch dialects, Frisian, Negerhollands and Afrikaans) show a similar range of variation in this area, both synchronically and diachronically. This project aims to investigate whether these surface similarities between macrovariation, synchronic and diachronic microvariation are also present on a deeper level of grammar.
Un-Cartesian Linguistics (Durham University)
For 400 years a guiding philosophical intuition on the nature of language has been that language is a - more or less deficient - medium for expressing our thoughts. But thoughts as such are independent of language. Linguistic signs, which serve the purpose of expressing thought, are arbitrary and regulated by convention. This view is a decisive component of the general, or rational, grammars arising in the 17th century, which was taken up and updated in the Chomskyan project of generative (universal) grammar. This project argues that this early modern, Cartesian axiomatics is at the root of a number of theoretical and empirical impasses in current linguistic theory. Another, non-rationalist, conception of universal grammar is developed, which is historically inspired by a second, today largely forgotten, universal grammar tradition: the late medieval Modistic grammars. These are guided by the leading idea that language is non-arbitrary: the organization of the linguistic sign is the organization of thought, with both organizations reflecting the structure of the real. Rather than assuming that thought is independent of language, the intuition that the grammaticalization of the hominid brain gave rise to a sapiens-specific mode of thought is pursued, which changed the organization of meaning radically. One of the more obvious challenges to this view is putative evidence supporting an 'autonomist' conception of grammar. Against such a conception it is heuristically assumed that there are no processes in grammar that are arbitrary in regards to either their phonetic or semantic interpretation.
