Syntacticians study how words combine into larger units (phrases and sentences) in human languages and how the combinatorial possibilities determine word order and grammatical relations between parts of a sentence.

Ellipsis is a frequently used sentence-shortening device. It allows us to leave out material that is evident from the (linguistic) context. Even though the elliptical material is not pronounced, elliptical sentences are not perceived as incomplete.

In this dissertation the notions of category and type are studied through the lens of logical syntax.

This study investigates the syntax and distribution of the two elliptical phenomena Gapping and Fragments, as well as the movements involved in ellipsis contexts in general.

This book offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to a novel theory of syntax, which analyzes grammar from a semantic perspective.

In this research, for the first time a detailed description as well as systematic and comparative analysis of the final particle system in Chinese are provided.

Lu, Man defended his thesis on 28 September 2017.

This dissertation provides a systematic description of English and Afrikaans verbal pseudo-coordination and a formal analysis couched in the Minimalist program.

This thesis investigates the syntax of object marking in Sambaa and the Bantu languages in general, with particular focus on Swahili and Haya, as points of comparison.

This thesis discusses the constructions relevant to Object Shift from the intonational perspective, by presenting experimental data from all the Scandinavian languages.

The main topic of the book is the nature of inner aspect of the Verb Phrase, and the relation between the decompositional and the quantificational approaches to this problem.

This thesis investigates aspects of phi-features in non-standard and minority West Germanic languages.

This dissertation defends the existence of a type of movement that has so far been considered not to be possible, namely, movement of a bare head to a specifier position over arbitrarily long distances.

Zhaole Yang defended his thesis on 25 June 2020.

The aim of this research was to establish if Ebeling's semiotactic theory and method of semiotactic analysis, as described in his works Syntax and Semantics (1978), Een Inleiding tot de Syntaxis (1994) and Semiotaxis, over Theoretische en Nederlandse Syntaxis (2006), could be applied to Modern Japanese…

The main aim of this project is to investigate the various ways in which language categorizes possession, how these are morphosyntactically encoded across and within languages, and how this distinction should be represented in a model of the language faculty.

This dissertation focuses on irregular patterns in Vedic Grammar and Poetry.

This dissertation provides a detailed description of the interaction between verb semantics and the two grammatical voice categories in the Vedic Sanskrit of the Rigveda.

The present study comprises a classification and analysis of the syntax of the non-verbal clause in Qumran Hebrew, i.e. the linguistic variety (or varieties) found in the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls. The corpus consists of the non-biblical texts written in Hebrew; biblical texts and texts written in…

Spatial analysis on the basis of material culture has always been one of the major topics in archaeological research. Designating Place analyses the urban space of Roman Ostia and Pompeii in different ways, namely via geophysical analysis, spatial analysis, iconographic analysis and epigraphic analy…

This dissertation investigates the interaction of aspect and subjectivity in modal constructions.

This dissertation focuses on the overt marking of φ features encoded on perfective active auxiliaries in a group of Southern Italian dialects.

This dissertation investigates whether and how gradability is manifested in the nominal domain, as well as the implications this could have for theories of the representation of gradability.

This project aims at investigating the syntactic role of focus in ellipsis across languages.

This dissertation provides a comprehensive overview of the grammar of Bantawa, a Kiranti (Rai) language spoken in Eastern Nepal.

This work sets out to investigate the form and function of the imperative in the Rigveda. The morphology (and, where relevant, etymology), syntax and semantics of the imperative are covered.

The main question of this research project concerns the extent to which light verbs in West Germanic languages participate in processes of language change.

This project launches a research program into the theoretical status and the terminological basis of evidentiality systems.

This dissertation investigates A'-dependencies in Standard German, Zurich German and Dutch where the dislocated constituent is indirectly, i.e. not transformationally, related to the position where it is interpreted. The analysis is carried out within the Principles & Parameters framework.

This dissertation investigates the grammar of Makhuwa-Enahara, a Bantu language spoken in the north of Mozambique. The information structure is an influential factor in this language, determining the word order and the use of special conjugations known as conjoint and disjoint verb forms.

This dissertation provides an account of polar questions in Italian dialects from a typological, theoretical and empirical perspective.

This study proposes a theory for the encoding of specificity and definiteness in the Chinese nominal based on Cantonese, Mandarin and Wenzhou data.

This project focuses on a striking parallelism between two macro-groups of languages: southern Italian dialects and the so-called split-ergative languages, like Basque, Georgian, Dyirbal, Hindi/Urdu.

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded LUCL researchers prof.dr. Lisa Cheng and dr. Anikó Liptak a Vrije Competitie grant for their research project

Theoretical linguistics seeks to understand the underlying principles of the nature of human language.

Conference

In this study, the formation of the Tocharian subjunctive is described, its use and meaning are analysed and its origins are investigated.