Grammaticalisation Professors and Supervisors

Cindy SchneiderView profile

Senior Lecturer

University of New England AustraliaAustralia

Cindy Schneider is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of New England (UNE), based in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. She specializes in language documentation, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics, with a focus on Pacific languages. Her research explores language policy, literacy practices, and the intersection of language and law. Education: Cindy holds a BS in Business/Marketing (Delaware), GrDip Linguistics (UNE), MA in Linguistics (Oregon), PhD in Linguistics (UNE), and LLB (UNE). Research Interests span language documentation (Pacific languages), sociolinguistic policy, vernacular literacy, language and legal systems, and mutual intelligibility between related language varieties. She has extensive fieldwork experience in Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, and Kenya. Publications include a monograph on the grammar of Abma (Vanuatu) and numerous articles on linguistic intelligibility, courtroom language dynamics, and language planning. Recent research focuses on language policy in multilingual courtrooms and language vitality in Pacific Island communities. Supervised over 20 graduate students in topics like language ecology, legal linguistics, and literacy practices. Recipient of multiple teaching commendations for courses such as LING244 (Language and the Law). Consultant for linguistic analyses in consumer law and authorship disputes. Community Engagement includes developing literacy resources in Suru Kavian and other Pacific languages, and organizing orthography workshops for Indigenous communities.

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Marieke MeelenView profile

Associate Professor

University of CambridgeUnited Kingdom

Dr Marieke Meelen is an Associate Professor in Historical Linguistics at the University of Cambridge, affiliated with the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics. She serves as a Fellow, Tutor, and Director of Studies at Trinity Hall. Research Interests: Historical Linguistics, Comparative Syntax, Information Structure, Grammaticalisation & Pragmaticalisation, NLP for low-resource languages, Celtic & Tibeto-Burman languages Projects: PI for ELDP-funded endangered language documentation in Nepal; collaborator on ERC-funded 'PaganTibet' and AHRC-funded 'Emergence of Egophoricity' Key Contributions: Development of ASR and HTR models for Tibeto-Burman languages; historical treebank of Welsh; computational approaches to Celtic and Tibeto-Burman syntax Publications & Grants focus on syntactic reconstruction, corpus creation, and NLP for endangered languages. She mentors PhD students working on Celtic or Tibeto-Burman languages and consults for computational linguistics projects.

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Egle MocciaroView profile

Associate Professor

Masaryk UniversityCzech

Egle Mocciaro is an Associate Professor and Department Vice-Head at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University. She specializes in linguistics, particularly focusing on language acquisition, modality, and Romance languages. Her research involves studying discourse markers in language learners, lexicalization strategies in motion events, and grammaticalization processes in Sicilian. She supervises doctoral theses in areas such as anti-vagueness strategies in spoken language and interlanguage development in learners of Italian. Her habilitation thesis, Paths of modality and beyond. The grammaticalisation of modals and directive markers in Sicilian , was reviewed by leading scholars and concluded in 2024. She teaches courses related to linguistics and Romance languages, contributing to both academic administration and pedagogical activities.

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Anand SyeaView profile

Professor

University of WestminsterUnited Kingdom

Anand Syea has been a full-time faculty member at the University of Westminster since 1991 and previously served as Head of the Linguistics Section (1997–2004). He is a Professor of Linguistics specialising in theoretical syntax, creole linguistics, language acquisition and language impairment, with a particular focus on Down’s Syndrome populations. Education BA in Linguistics – University College of North Wales, Bangor MA in Applied Linguistics – University of Essex PhD in Linguistics (Syntax) – University of Essex Research Interests His research agenda spans four interconnected domains. First, theoretical syntax , where he works within the Minimalist and Principles-and-Parameters frameworks. Second, creole linguistics , exploring the morphosyntax of English- and French-based creoles and their implications for linguistic theory. Third, language acquisition , investigating both first- and second-language development. Finally, language impairment , especially the linguistic characteristics of Down’s Syndrome speakers of creole languages. Current projects include comprehensive grammatical descriptions of English-based creoles, longitudinal studies of Down’s Syndrome creole speakers, and analyses of language mixing between creoles and Bhojpuri in former plantation colonies. Publications & Scholarly Output Across more than three decades, Syea’s scholarship has appeared in leading journals such as Theoretical Linguistics , Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages , Linguistics and Acta Linguistica Hafniensia . His book-length works include The Syntax of Mauritian Creole (2013) and A Comprehensive and Comparative Grammar of French-based Creoles (2017), with a forthcoming volume on English-based creoles slated for 2024. Doctoral Supervision & Academic Service He welcomes PhD applications in all areas of syntax, especially those focused on creole languages. To date he has supervised or co-supervised multiple doctoral students; the only named example in the provided text is Mr Andrew Booth, whose thesis examined Manx English phonology. Professional Memberships Society of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics Linguistic Association of Great Britain

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Josh PhillipsView profile

Lecturer

Yale UniversityUnited States

Josh Phillips is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at Yale University. He works closely with Claire Bowern, leading a National Science Foundation-funded project (NSF award № 2116164) to investigate natural language negation, its variation, and historical development. His research bridges formal semantics and diachronic linguistics, focusing on creole languages and Australian languages, particularly those spoken in Arnhem Land. Research Focus: Semantics of functional categories, contact-induced language change, and computational phylogenetics. Teaching: Courses include intensional semantics, pragmatic theory, meaning change, and language endangerment. Methodology: Combines fieldwork in Northern Australia (Ramingiṉiŋ, Ropa/Ngukurr) with formal semantic frameworks. His work contributes to understanding how temporal and modal phenomena interact in understudied languages, informing broader theories of grammaticalisation and modal logic. Though currently under construction, his website hosts manuscripts, syllabi, and CV.

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Michael FranjiehView profile

Research Fellow

University of SurreyUnited Kingdom

Dr. Michael Franjieh is a Research Fellow at the Surrey Morphology Group and a Sustainability Fellow at the Institute for Sustainability, University of Surrey. He holds a PhD from SOAS, University of London, and specializes in the documentation and description of Oceanic languages, particularly those of Vanuatu. His research focuses on nominal categorization, morphology, and grammaticalization, with an interdisciplinary approach investigating the emergence of grammatical gender from classifiers in Oceanic languages. Current projects include the ESRC-funded 'Optimal Categorisation' project and the 'Sustainable Endangered Language Maintenance in the South Pacific.' His educational background includes a BA (Hons), MA, and PhD from SOAS, University of London, with expertise in psycholinguistics and language policy. His work bridges theoretical linguistics with practical applications, such as vernacular language teaching and literacy development in Vanuatu communities. Collaborations with Prof. Greville Corbett and Dr. Alexandra Grandison further emphasize cognitive and diachronic perspectives in language structure. Publications highlight classifier systems, possessive constructions, and language documentation, often involving community engagement. His research trends emphasize interdisciplinary methods, combining experimental psychology with traditional linguistic analysis to explore nominal classification origins. Projects like the Fanbyak DoReCo dataset and free-listing techniques reflect a strong commitment to semantic fieldwork and endangered language preservation. No scientific awards are explicitly mentioned. He contributes to academic teams and projects without listed advisees, focusing on collaborative research and institutional sustainability initiatives. His affiliation with the Surrey Morphology Group and Institute for Sustainability underscores interdisciplinary work at the intersection of language structure, culture, and environmental stewardship.

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Zeltia Blanco SuarezView profile

Professor

University of Santiago de CompostelaSpain

Zeltia Blanco Suarez is a Professor of English Philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela, affiliated with the Faculty of Philology and the Department of English and German Philology. She is a member of the VLCG research group (Variation, linguistic change and grammaticalization). Her doctoral thesis (2017), supervised by Dra. María José López Couso, focused on Death-related intensifiers in the history of the English language: grammaticalisation and other processes of language change . Her research interests center on historical linguistics, grammaticalization processes, diachronic analysis of intensifiers (especially 'dead', 'deadly', and 'mortal'), and corpus-based studies of Early Modern English. She has conducted groundbreaking work on the evolution of grammatical structures in Irish English through analysis of the 1641 Depositions corpus and pioneered studies on CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) in primary education. Her publications span over 15 years, consistently exploring lexical semantic change, syntactic evolution, and the interplay between context and language structure. Notable contributions include analyses of the Irish English habitual 'do V' construction and the cognitive mechanisms behind intensifier development. She has also reviewed major works in intensification studies, contributing to theoretical debates in historical linguistics. Blanco Suarez holds no explicitly listed awards but maintains an active research agenda through participation in international conferences and collaborative projects. Her work bridges historical linguistics with contemporary corpus methodologies, offering new perspectives on language change dynamics.

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