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In Focus

Upcoming Events

Seminar Series: 15 May 2013 at 16.00

Syntax Reading Group: 22 May 2013 at 15.30

ACTL Summerschool June 24 - 28 2013

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Elena Titov

Research Student

Email: e.titov@ucl.ac.uk

Principal Supervisor: Hans van de Koot

Subsidary Supervisor: Ad Neeleman

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Research Interests

My current research is concerned with argument order alternations in Russian. My PhD thesis deals with the question of what licenses argument reordering interpretatively and formally. I explore two linked hypotheses. First, I argue that argument reordering requires a formal licence. That is to say, it can be argued that argument order alternations of the kind found in Russian are permitted only in case the grammatical functions of the arguments can be established by means other than their surface structural position. For instance, it has been widely observed that morphological case marking on Russian NPs allows the assignment of grammatical functions such as Subject, Direct Object and Indirect Object without reference to a specific syntactic position. The second hypothesis defended in my thesis is that whenever the thematic interpretations carried by arguments are recoverable without reference to syntactic structure, the latter is used to encode information-structural prominence of arguments. As a consequence, for a given monotransitive sentence, the interpretations associated with all the six possible orders can potentially be truth-conditionally identical, with their interpretive differences restricted to truth-conditionally neutral aspects of information structure.

Dissertations

Titov, E. 2007. Pragmatic effects on Russian word (dis)order: Evidence from syntactic and semantic reconstruction. MA Thesis, UCL.

Publications

Titov, E. 2011. Encoding focus and contrast in Russian. In Ad Neeleman & Reiko Vermeulen (eds.), A Flexible Theory of Topic and Focus Movement. Ms. UCL / Ghent University.

Titov, E. 2010. Do contrastive topics exist? (submitted to Journal of Linguistics) For a prepublication copy go to http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/001161

Neeleman, A., Titov,E. 2009. Focus, contrast, and stress in Russian. Linguistic Inquiry 40(3), 514-524. ISSN: 0024-3892

Neeleman,A., Titov,E., van de Koot,H., Vermeulen,R. 2009. A Syntactic Typology of Topic, Focus and Contrast. in Van Craenenbroeck,J. (ed.) Alternatives to Cartography. Studies in Generative Grammar series. Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN: 978-3-11-020603-6

Presentations

2011 ‘Scrambling and interfaces.’ Information Structure: Empirical Perspectives on Theory. University of Potsdam

2010 ‘Encoding focus, topic and contrast.’ New approaches to Russian syntax. University of Groningen

2010 ‘Do contrastive topics exist?’ UCL LingLunch.

Teaching Experience/Responsibilities

2012 Teaching Assistant in Intermediate Generative Grammar B, UCL Linguistics

2012 Teaching Assistant in Interfaces, UCL Linguistics

2011 Teaching Assistant in Introduction to Generative Grammar A, UCL Linguistics

2011 Teaching Assistant in Introduction to Language, UCL Linguistics

2011 Teaching Assistant in Intermediate Generative Grammar A, UCL Linguistics

2011 Lecturer in Syntactic Theory, Westminster University

2010 Teaching Assistant in Intermediate Generative Grammar B, UCL Linguistics

2009 and 2010 Teaching Assistant in Introduction to Generative Grammar B, UCL Linguistics

2008 and 2009 Teaching Assistant in Introduction to Syntax for MA/MSc Students, UCL Linguistics

2009 Lecturer in Introduction to Linguistics and Syntactic Theory, UCL Italian

2008-2009 Lecturer in Syntactic Theory, UCL Italian

Page last modified on 09 mar 12 11:54 by Natalie Wilkins