Research supervision

I have supervised, or am currently supervising, the following research students and topics:

Current PhD students

• Harald Flohr, Irish syntax and semantics (in progress).
• Tam Blaxter, Variation and change in Middle Norwegian (in progress).
• Jessica Brown, Syntax of pseudo-coordination (in progress).
• James Chancharu, Typology of prohibitive markers (in progress).

Former PhD students

• Marius Jøhndal, Nonfiniteness in Latin (PhD awarded 2012).
• George Walkden, Syntactic reconstruction and Proto-Germanic (PhD awarded 2012), now lecturer in English linguistics at the University of Manchester.
• Elliott Lash, A synchronic and diachronic analysis of Old Irish copular clauses (PhD completed 2011), now at the School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.
• Chris Lucas, The development of negation in Arabic and Afro-Asiatic as part of the Development of negation in the languages of Europe project (PhD completed 2010), now lecturer in Arabic linguistics, SOAS, University of London.
• Yi-An Lin, A phase-based minimalist account of Chinese noun phrase structure (PhD awarded 2010).
• Michael Johnstone, Theoretical approaches to language variation and change (PhD completed 2006)
• Casilda García de la Maza, The grammar, semantics and productivity of the English middle construction (PhD completed 2004)

MPhil students

• James Chancharu, Tactile passives and modals in Southeast Asia: Polyfunctionality, grammaticalisation, and language contact (MPhil, 2011)
• Wen Yi Soh, Language contact in Malaysia (MPhil, 2011)
• George Walkden, The Comparative Method in syntactic reconstruction (MPhil, 2009)
• Ruth Bircham, Null subjects in the Baltic languages: A challenge for the pro-drop parameter? (MPhil, 2007)
• Andrew Janes, Phrasal verbs in Middle English and present-day English (MPhil, 2004)
• Marius Jøhndal, HPSG as a model of syntactic change (MPhil, 2007)
• Tim MacDonald, Double Definiteness in Scandinavian (MPhil, 2007)
• Sara Mörtsell, Left dislocation in Scandinavian (MPhil, 2007)
• Keith Shaw, Linguistic accommodation in two North Yorkshire social networks (MPhil, 2002)
• Paul Shields, A Minimlaist approach to English/Swahili codemixing data (MPhil, 2006)
• Rana Yates, Patterns of tense, mood and aspect marking in French creoles of the Lesser Antilles (MPhil, 2001)

I am particularly interested in supervising research students in the following areas:

• principles of linguistic change (especially syntax)
• theoretical syntax (especially negation, verb-initial languages, wh-constructions, noun phrases, clitics)
• Celtic linguistics (especially history of Welsh, Middle Welsh language, history of Breton, Welsh syntax)
• Slavonic linguistics (especially history of Russian, history of Bulgarian, comparative Slavonic morphosyntax)

© David Willis 2010-14
Last update: 20 March 2014