Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages Raised Faculty Building 海角社区 Sidgwick Avenue 海角社区 CB3 9DA United Kingdom
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Professor Roberts鈥� research is in theoretical linguistics, more specifically in comparative syntax. His work is set against the background assumptions argued for by Noam Chomsky: that there exists a specific human cognitive capacity for language which is present at birth and requires simple environmental stimulation in order for linguistic competence in the mother tongue to develop during the early years of life. The theory of this capacity is known as Universal Grammar. Accepting this nativist approach to language raises the challenge of accounting for the existence of seemingly very diverse grammatical structures in the languages of the world. Professor Roberts鈥� work, along with that of a very active worldwide community of linguists, is concerned with showing how these grammatical systems differ along relatively simple lines in such a way that the central distinguishing features are accessible to children acquiring language on the basis of primary linguistic data. To this end, he has worked on the comparative and historical syntax of many of the Germanic, Romance and Celtic languages. In 2011-17, Professor Roberts held a European Research Council Advanced Grant funding a project whose goal is to investigate a specific hypothesis as to the way in which the grammatical options made available by Universal Grammar are organised. Refining and testing this hypothesis involves looking at languages from all over the world, and assessing the extent to which certain patterns recur.
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Syntax, Language Typology.
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Comparative and Historical Syntax.
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鈥淩ethinking Comparative Synax鈥� (ReCoS), European Research Council Advanced Grant, 2011-17.
鈥淕iving Voice to Digital Democracies: The Social Impact of Artificially Intelligent Communications Technology鈥� Centre for Humanities and Social Change, 海角社区.
鈥淓xtending Parametric Comparison鈥� 海角社区 Humanities Research Grant, 2020-21
鈥淩econstructing Proto Indo European Syntax through Parametric Comparison鈥� 海角社区 Humanities Research Grant, 2021-22.
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Roberts, I. 2021. Diachronic Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2nd edition.
Roberts, I. 2019. Parameter Hierarchies and Universal Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Roberts, I. 2018. Comparative and Diachronic Syntax. London: Routledge (Routledge Leading Linguists Series).
Sheehan, M., T. Biberauer, A. Holmberg & I. Roberts. 2017. The Final over Final Condition: A Syntactic Universal. 海角社区, MA: MIT Press.
Roberts, I. 2017. The Wonders of Language, or How to Make Noises and Influence People. 海角社区: 海角社区 University Press.
Biberauer, T. & I. Roberts. 2015. The Clausal Hierarchy, Features and Parameters. In U. Shlonsky (ed) Beyond Functional Sequence: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Volume 10. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 295-313.
Roberts, I. & J. Watumull. 2015. Leibnizian Linguistics, in Angel Gallego and Dennis Ott (eds) 50 years later: reflections on Chomsky, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 77:211-222.
Biberauer, T. & I. Roberts. 2015. Rethinking Formal Hierarchies: A Proposed Unification. 海角社区 Occasional Papers in Linguistics 7:1-31.
Biberauer, T., A. Holmberg, I. Roberts & M. Sheehan. 2014. Complexity in comparative syntax: the view from modern parametric听theory. In F. Newmeyer & L. Preston (eds) Measuring Grammatical Complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 103-127.
Holmberg, A. & I. Roberts. 2014. Parameters and the three factors of language design. In C. Picallo (ed) Linguistic Variation in the Minimalist Framework. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Roberts, I. 2014a. Taraldsen鈥檚 Generalisation and Diachronic Syntax: Two Ways to Lose Null Subjects. In P. Svenonius (ed) Functional Structure from Top to Toe: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Volume 9. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 115-148.
Roberts, I. 2014b. Syntactic Change. In A. Carnie, D. Siddiqi & Y. Sato (eds) Routledge Handbook of Syntax. London, Routledge, pp. 391-408.
Roberts, I. 2014c. Subject clitics and macroparameters. In P. Beninc脿, A. Ledgeway & N. Vincent (eds) Diachrony and Dialects: Grammatical change in the dialects of Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 177-201.
Aboh, E., M.-T. Guasti & I. Roberts. 2014. Locality. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Biberauer, T., A. Holmberg & I. Roberts. 2014. A Syntactic Universal and its听Consequences. Linguistic Inquiry 45:169-225.
Roberts, I. 2014. The Mystery of the Overlooked Discipline: Modern Syntactic Theory and Cognitive Science. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 58:151-178.
Watumull, J., Hauser, M., Hornstein, N. & I. Roberts. 2014. On Recursion. Frontiers in Psychology 4:1017.
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