Jo Close

Research Fellow, Survey of English Usage
j.close@ucl.ac.uk

Research interests

My main research interests are theoretical syntax, syntactic variation, language change, English dialect syntax, and the English auxiliary system. I completed a PhD (English Auxiliaries: A Syntactic Account of Contraction and Variation) at the University of York in 2004, and joined the Survey of English Usage in November 2007.

Current research

I am currently a research fellow on the Changing verb phrase in present-day British English research project. In this project we will conduct a large-scale investigation of changes in the (morpho)syntax of the spoken British English verb phrase over a period of twenty-five years (1960s-1990s), using the Diachronic Corpus of Present-day Spoken English (DCPSE).

Recent conference presentations

Close, J. and B. Aarts. Changes in the use of the modals HAVE TO, HAVE GOT TO and MUST. Presented at the International Conference for English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL) 15, Munich, 26 August 2008. »Handout (PDF).

Close, J. and B. Aarts. MUST and its rivals in the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English. Presented at the First Triennial Conference of the International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE), Freiburg, 8 October 2008. »Handout (PDF).

Close, J. and B. Aarts. The subjunctive in spoken British English. Presented at ICAME 30, Lancaster, 28 May 2009. »PowerPoint Presentation (PPT).

Aarts, B., J. Close and S. Wallis. Choices over time: Some methodological issues in research into current change. Presented at the symposium on Current Change in the English Verb Phrase at the third International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English (ICLCE 3), London, 14 July 2009. »PowerPoint Presentation (PPT).

Publications

In prep. "The subjunctive in spoken British English." )
In prep. "Recent changes in the use of the progressive construction in English." (with Bas Aarts and Sean Wallis) »Download (PDF).
In prep. "Current change in the modal system of English: A case study of MUST, HAVE TO and HAVE GOT TO." (with Bas Aarts) »Download (PDF).
2007 "Double Modals as Adverb-Modal Constructions in an American English Dialect." In Bardeas, S. & M. Kaimaki (eds). York Papers in Linguistics, Series 2, Issue 7, pp. 1-20.
2006 "Two Have or Not Two Have: The Multiple Realisation of Auxiliary Have in English Dialects." In Guy, T. & C. Harris (eds). York Papers in Linguistics, Series 2, Issue 6, pp. 1-26.
2006 (with A. Galani, B. Sinar & P. Wallage, editors) Papers from the Third York-Holland Symposium on the History of English Syntax. York Papers in Linguistics, Series 2, Issue 5.
2005 "The Syntax of Double Modals in Hawick Scots." In Hicks, G. & G. Walker (eds). York Papers in Linguistics, Series 2, Issue 3, pp. 7-25.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

 

 

This page last modified 14 May, 2020 by Jo Close.