About
Robert Truswell is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh, affiliated with the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences. He co-directs the MSc in Cognition in Science and Society and teaches courses including 'MSc Introduction to Semantics' and contributes to several undergraduate modules. His research focuses on syntax, semantics, language change, diachronic typology, event structure, and binding theory. Beyond academia, he enjoys traditional music and hillwalking.
Truswell leads the Parsed Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (PLAEME) project, a collaborative effort annotating manuscripts for syntactic analysis. He has supervised numerous PhD and MSc students, including notable advisees such as Paul Melchin and Carmen Saldana. His work bridges historical linguistics with computational methods, as seen in his corpus-based analyses and edited volumes on micro/macro changes in syntax.
- Education: Not explicitly listed in text.
- Grants: British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant (PI for PLAEME project).
- Labs/Teams: PLAEME project team, collaboration with Rhona Alcorn, James Donaldson, and Joel Wallenberg.
His teaching spans syntax, semantics, and historical linguistics, with contributions to courses like 'Current Issues in Semantics and Pragmatics'. He actively publishes in top-tier journals and edited volumes, emphasizing syntactic theory, historical syntax, and computational linguistics.
