Department of Linguistics

Department of Linguistics

   

David Willis specialises in historical linguistics and theoretical syntax, working primarily on material from Celtic and Slavonic languages (especially Breton, Bulgarian, Russian and Welsh). He has published a book on word order change in Welsh, Syntactic change in Welsh: A study of the loss of verb-second (1998, OUP). He is currently working (with Anne Breitbarth) on an AHRC-funded project on the history of negation across European languages (especially Jespersen's Cycle), on degrammaticalisation in Slavonic and Celtic languages, and on the syntax of numerals and noun phrases in Welsh and Russian. He has recently completed an AHRC- funded projected to create a Historical Corpus of the Welsh language 1500-1850 and and a volume co-written with Bob Borsley (Essex) and Maggie Tallerman (Newcastle) entitled The syntax of Welsh (2007, CUP).