Rachel Nye
Contact information
Muinkkaai 42
9000 Ghent (Belgium)
(+32) 09 331 32 74
rachel.nye(at)ugent.be
Research interests
My main research interests involve the syntax and interpretation of wh-clauses, primarily - but not exclusively - in English, which I explore from the perspective of the cartographic framework. In my work, I aim to bring novel empirical data to bear on the standard issues discussed in relation to wh-clauses, such as clause-typing and the interpretation of embedded wh-structures. My belief is that investigating the behaviour of lesser-studied and/or non-canonical wh-forms, e.g. whereabouts? and whenabouts?, informs us not just about the syntax of the specific structures in which such expressions appear, but also feeds into our understanding of the behaviour of standard wh-expressions where (roughly)? and when (roughly)?, and the theories we posit for wh-clauses.
I am particularly interested in those non-canonical wh-structures which seem to involve a mismatch between form and interpretation, for instance root how-clauses which have the form of interrogatives but are interpreted as exclamations (How cool is that?! How healthy am I?!), which I term how pseudo-questions (HPQs), and embedded complementiser-like how-clauses (CLHCs), which have neither an interrogative nor an exclamative interpretation (John told me how he'd never been to Spain). Inspired by the nanosyntactic framework, I am becoming increasingly interested in the form and function of the lexical item how cross-linguistically.
I am also interested in the dialect syntax of Northern English varieties, in particular that of Lancashire (NW England) and have worked on the syntax of the 'alternative double object construction' (She showed the data her professor) which is accepted alongside the canonical double object (She showed her professor the data) and the prepositional object construction (She showed the data to her professor) for speakers of this variety.
MA thesis
2009. How pseudo-questions and the interpretation of wh-clauses in English. University of Essex.
Publications
Articles
- 2012. The categorial status of Dutch and English declarative hoe-/how-complement clauses. In M. van Hattum, J. Morris and D. Hoffman (eds.) Salford Working Papers in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics 2, 28-47. University of Salford.
- 2011. Competing analyses for how pseudo-questions in English. In A. Agryani & M. Krzek (eds.) Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics 17, 131-153. University of Newcastle, Centre for Research in Linguistics and Language Sciences.
Book chapters
- 2012. Main Clause Phenomena and the privilege of the root. With Lobke Aelbrecht and Liliane Haegeman. To appear in L. Aelbrecht, L. Haegeman & R. Nye (eds.) Main Clause Phenomena: New Horizons. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Edited volumes
- 2012. With Lobke Aelbrecht and Liliane Haegeman. Main Clause Phenomena: New Horizons. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Manuscripts
- 2010. She showed the data her professor: the alternative double object construction in Lancashire English.
Presentations
Conference presentations (based on an anonymously reviewed abstract):
January 2013. Complementiser-like how clauses and the distribution of finite clausal complements in English (oral presentation). ConSOLE 2013, University of Potsdam, Germany.
August 2012. Presupposition in the clausal and nominal domains (oral presentaton). With Liliane Haegeman. 45th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE), Stockholm University, Sweden.
April 2012. Complementiser-like how as wh-phrase: evidence from its cross-linguistic syntax (oral presentation). SWIGG 2012 (Swiss Workshop in Generative Grammar), University of Geneva.
April 2012. Declarative how: factivity, referentiality and D-linking (oral presentation). With Liliane Haegeman. Mismatches in Clause Linkage Workshop, ZAS, Berlin.
September 2011. All about the syntax of whereabouts and whenabouts (oral presentation). 44th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE), Universidad de la Rioja, Logroño, Spain.
July 2011. All about the syntax of -abouts (oral presentation). ICLCE 4 (International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English), Osnabrück University, Germany.
September 2010. The categorial status of Dutch and English declarative hoe-/how-complement clauses (oral presentation). 19th International Postgraduate Linguistics Conference on Language Variation and Change, University of Manchester.
September 2010. The categorial status of Dutch and English declarative hoe-/how-complement clauses (oral presentation). LESCOL 4 (Leipzig Students’ Conference in Linguistics), Leipzig University.
March 2010. How cool is that! A minimalist account of how pseudo-questions in English (poster presentation). 5th Newcastle Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics.
Other presentations
February 2013. Rethinking the distribution of finite clausal complements in English: evidence from complementiser-like how clauses (oral presentation). TIN-dag (Linguistics in the Netherlands Day), Utrecht.
April 2012. How wh is how? The syntax of complementiser-like how clauses in English (oral presentation). Séminaire de recherche, Département de linguistique, Geneva University.
May 2011. Complementiser-like how clauses - distribution, extraction, factivity (oral presentation). GIST3: Cartographic Structures and Beyond, Ghent University.
May 2011. Complementiser-like how clauses - distribution, extraction, factivity (oral presentation). Linguistic Society of Belgium Linguists’ Day, University of Antwerp.
February 2011. The categorial status of Dutch and English declarative hoe-/how-complement clauses (oral presentation). LingForum, Ghent University.
February 2011. All about the syntax of whereabouts and whenabouts (oral presentation). TIN-dag (Linguistics in the Netherlands Day), Utrecht.
January 2011. All about the syntax of whereabouts and whenabouts (oral presentation). Brussels Student Syntax meeting, HUB, Brussels.
February 2010. How cool is that! A syntactic account of how pseudo-questions in English (oral presentation). TIN-dag (Linguistics in the Netherlands Day), Utrecht.
January 2010. She showed the data her professor: the alternative double object construction in Lancashire English (oral presentation). Brussels Student Syntax meeting, HUB, Brussels.
Curriculum Vitae
A downloadable version of my CV is available here.