Name
Sarah Gordon
College
Trinity Hall
skg45@cam.ac.uk
Supervisors
Dr Marieke Meelen and Professor Ianthi Tsimpli. Professor Adam Schembri (University of Birmingham) is her advisor.
Research Topic
Null subjects and information structure in British Sign Language and the history of English
About听
Sarah is a PhD student in the department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. Her research interests include language variation and change, language acquisition, syntax, information structure, sign language linguistics and the link between language acquisition and language change. She has experience using both corpus and experimental methods and has conducted research in historical linguistics and language acquisition.听
Research
Sarah is researching the distribution of null and overt subjects in British Sign Language and Old and early Middle English, looking at grammatical, semantic, discourse and social factors. Similarities in the distribution of null subjects in two such typologically diverse languages will give insight into the core properties of null subjects. Differences between the two languages will enrich our understanding of the cross-linguistic variation in null subject languages. As null subjects are virtually non-existent after the earliest period of Middle English, this project will also shed light on how null subjects are lost from a language.听
Scholarships/Prizes听
ESRC DTP 1+3 studentship match funded by Trinity Hall.
Conference Papers
Gordon, S. and Willis, D. (2022) The geospatial diffusion of innovative forms of 鈥榮he鈥� in Middle English through time. Linguistics Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (LAGB), Ulster University, Belfast.
Publications听
Gordon, S. (2022) A Diachronic Study of the Pre- and Post-Verbal Distribution of Prepositional Phrases in Latin. 海角社区 Occasional Papers in Linguistics vol. 14(1), pp. 34-87.听
Teaching
Supervisor for Li15 (First and Second Language Acquisition)
Other activities and roles
Co-organiser of the Historical Linguistics Reading Group
