Research
My main research interests
are in syntactic theory. I have done work within a number of theoretical
frameworks, most notably Head-driven
Phrase Structure Grammar and Principles and Parameters theory, and I have
made some significant contributions to the former. Much of my work has been
concerned with English, but I have also worked extensively on Welsh and I have
written a number of papers on Polish and Breton. In the late 1980’s, I did some
work on computational grammars as a visiting scientist at the IBM UK Scientific
Centre in
I have published six other
books on syntax: Syntactic
Theory: A Unified Approach (Edward Arnold, 1991, second edition 1999), The
Syntax of the Celtic Languages: A Comparative Perspective edited with Ian Roberts of the University of
Cambridge (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Modern
Phrase Structure Grammar (Blackwell, 1996), Slavic in
Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar edited with Adam Przepiórkowski of the
University of Warsaw (CSLI, 1999), The
Nature and Function of Syntactic Categories (Academic Press, 1999), and
The
Syntax of Welsh for Cambridge University Press with Maggie
Tallerman of the University of Newcastle and David Willis of the
University of Cambridge.
I am currently editing a
book for Blackwell with Kersti
Börjars of the
Publications since 2000
Borsley, R. D. (ed.),
(2000), The Nature and Function of Syntactic Categories,
Borsley, R. D. (2000),
‘What is generative grammar?’, in P. Bański and A. Przepiórkowski (eds.), GLIP-1:
Proceedings of the First Generative Linguistics in Poland Conference,
Polish
Borsley, R. D. and B. M. Jones (2000), ‘The syntax of
Welsh negation’, Transactions of the Philological Society 98:1, 15-47.
Borsley, R.D. and A. Kathol (2000),
‘Breton as a V2 language’, Linguistics 38, 665-710.
Borsley, R. D. and J.
Kornfilt (2000), ‘Mixed extended projections’, in R.D. Borsley (ed.), The
Nature and Function of Syntactic Categories, New York: Academic Press,
101-131.
Borsley, R.D. (2001), ‘What
do prepositional complementizers do?’, Probus 13, 155-171.
Borsley, R. D. and B. M.
Jones (2001), ‘Negation in colloquial Welsh’, in R. Cann, C. Grover and P.
Miller (eds.), Grammatical Interfaces, CSLI Publications, Stanford,
33-50.
Borsley, R. D. and B. M.
Jones (2001), ‘The development of finiteness in early Welsh’, Journal of
Celtic Language Learning 6, 9-20.
Borsley, R. D. (2002),
‘Where is Welsh?’, Planet 150, 92-95.
Borsley, R. D. and R.
Ingham (2002), ‘Grow your own linguistics? On some applied linguists’ views of
the subject’, Lingua 112, 1-6.
Borsley, R. D. (2003). ‘On
the Polish periphery: comparative correlatives in Polish’, in P. Bański
and A. Przepiórkowski (eds.), GLIP-5: Proceedings of Fifth Generative
Linguistics in Poland Conference, Polish Academy of Science, Warsaw.
Borsley, R.D. and R. Ingham
(2003), ‘More on ‘some applied linguists’: A response to Stubbs’, Lingua
113, 193-196.
Borsley, R. D. (2004), ‘An approach to
English comparative correlatives’, in S. Müller (ed.), Proceedings of
the 11th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar,
Stanford: CSLI Publications, 70-92.
Borsley, R. D.
(2004), ‘On the
periphery: Comparative correlatives in Polish and English’, in O. Arnaudova, W.
Browne, M-L. Rivero and D. Stojanovic (eds.), Proceedings of Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 12, 59-90.
Borsley, R. D. and B. M.
Jones (2004), ‘The
distribution and interpretation of Welsh n-words’, in O. Bonami and P.
Cabredo Hofherr (eds.), Empirical issues in Syntax
and Semantics 5, 7-25.
Borsley, R. D. (2005),
‘Against ConjP’, Lingua 115, 461-482.
Borsley, R. D. (2005), ‘Les
coordinations relevant-elles de la syntaxe X-barre?’, Langages 160, 25-41.
Borsley, R. D. (2005),
‘Introduction’, in ‘Data in Theoretical Linguistics’, Lingua 115, 1475-80.
Borsley, R. D. and B. M.
Jones (2005), Welsh Negation and Grammatical
Theory,
Borsley, R. D. (2006), ‘On
the nature of Welsh VSO clauses’, Lingua
116, 462-490.
Borsley, R. D. (2006), ‘Syntactic and lexical
approaches to unbounded dependences’, Essex
Research Reports in Linguistics 49,
31-57.
Borsley,
R. D. (2006), ‘A linear approach to negative prominence’, in S. Müller (ed.), Proceedings of the
HPSG06 Conference, Stanford: CSLI Publications, 60-80.
Abeillé A., R. D. Borsley and
M-T. Espinal (2006), ‘The syntax of
comparative correlatives in French and Spanish’, in
Abeillé,
A. and R. D. Borsley (2006), ‘La syntaxe des corrélatives comparatives en
anglais et en français’, Faits de langue 28. 21-33.
Borsley, R. D. (2007), ‘Hang on again! Are we
on the right track?’, in A. Radford (ed.), Martin
Atkinson: The Minimalist Muse, Essex
Research Reports in Linguistics 53,
.43-69.
Borsley,
R. D., M. Tallerman and D. Willis (2007), The
Syntax of Welsh,
Borsley,
R.D. (2008), ‘On some Welsh unbounded dependency constructions’, Essex
Research Reports in Linguistics 57.4,
1-21
Abeillé, A. and R. D. Borsley
(2008), ‘Comparative correlatives and parameters’,
Lingua 118, 1139-1157.
Arnold D. and R. D. Borsley
(2008), ‘Non-restrictive
relative clauses, ellipsis and anaphora’, in
Borsley,
R. D. (2009), ‘On the superficiality of Welsh
agreement’, Natural Language and
Linguistic Theory 27, 225-265.
Borsley, R. D. (2009), ‘On so-called transitive expletives in
Belfast English’, English Language and Linguistics 13, 409-431.
Borsley,
R. D. and F.
J. Newmeyer (2009), ‘On subject-auxiliary inversion and the notion “purely
formal generalization”’, Cognitive
Linguistics 20, 135–143.
Dr Syntax at Free Mason's Hall, by Thomas
Rowlandson