Research

Research Summary

The core empirical focus of my research is the synchronic and diachronic syntax of the Gallo-Romance languages, in particular French and Occitan. I have theoretical interests in the structure of the C-layer, verb-movement, the syntax of subject positions and second position phenomena more generally. My research has a strong comparative focus and I aim to synthesise traditional descriptive philologically oriented work with recent formal theoretical insights, to better understand the processes conditioning linguistic variation and change. Recent collaborative work includes a handbook on the Verb Second property, an edited volume on syntactic parallels between Germanic and Romance languages and an edited volume on grammatical variation and change in Gallo-Romance. Christine Meklenborg (Oslo) and I are currently editing a special issue of Journal of Historical Syntax on the factors conditioning word order stability in a range of languages.

Syntactic Change in French

The focus of my research at present is in writing a substantial monograph and related articles nad chapters on syntactic change in French, with the empirical focus of ‘French’ being interpreted widely to include a number of Northern Gallo-Romance varieties and French-lexified creoles. In particular I will be looking at changes affecting Object-Verb orders, verb movement, subject positions, negation, object pronouns and the structure of nominals from late Latin and the earliest Gallo-Romance texts through to the present day.

Verb Second in Medieval Romance

My research from 2012 - 2016 was focussed on the syntax of the Medieval Romance languages, with particular reference to the Verb Second property. The findings appear in a 2018 monograph with Oxford University Press entitled Verb Second in Medieval Romance, which draws on data from Old French, Occitan, Sardinian, Venetian, Sicilian and Spanish.

I have published a number of articles and book chapters on the data from thee languages and the theoretical issues that arise in accurately describing and analysing their word order properties. These have appeared in volumes with John Benjamins and Oxford University Press alongside articles in Lingua, Transactions of the Philological Society, Archivio Glottologico Italiano, Linguistic Variation, Rivista di Grammatica Generativa and Diachronica.

From October 2015 to September 2016 I was a Research Associate on the ERC-funded Rethinking Comparative Syntax Project, led by Prof. Ian Roberts FBA. On the project I worked on what theoretical, comparative and diachronic approaches to Verb Second and the left periphery can tell us about points of commonality and variation across human languages, principally through the development of parametric hierarchies. The empirical focus of my research on the project was Old and Middle French and Old Occitan.