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School of Linguistics & English Language

Staff Profile of Dirk Bury

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Name:

Dirk Bury

Postion:

RCUK Academic Fellow

Email:

Location:

Phone:

01248 388528

I studied English Philology, General Linguistics and Philosophy at Albert Ludwigs-University in Freiburg. After a year as an exchange student at the Linguistics Department in Bangor, I then moved to London for an MA and a PhD in Linguistics (2003) at UCL. I spent the next two years part-time teaching at various places in London (Roehampton, Westminster, Queen Mary's, and UCL) and I returned to Bangor on a 11-month teaching contract in 2005. Since October 2006, I've been in my current position as RCUK Academic Fellow.

My research has mainly been in theoretical syntax, in particular on the theory of phrase structure. Among others, I've also worked on the structure of free relatives, the difference between verb-initial and verb-second languages, and on complementizer optionality. Languages that I've worked on include English, German, Welsh and Breton. I'm also interested in all areas of bilingualism and language contact, in particular the analysis of code-switching and contact-induced grammatical language change.

I've taught most areas of linguistics (including pragmatics, sociolinguistics, language and mind, and the structure of Italian) but most of my teaching has been in syntax.

Publications

  • 2007 (to appear) Verb movement and VSO-VOS alternations. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 19.
  • 2005 Preverbal particles in verb-initial languages. In A. Carnie, H. Harley, S. Dooley, eds. Verb-first: The syntax of verb-initial languages, John Benjamins.
    135-154.
  • 2004 Selection and head chains. In H.-J. Yoon, ed. Generative Grammar in a Broader Perspective: Proceedings of the 4th GLOW in Asia 2003, Hankook, 67-86.
  • 2004 Lingua-special issue: Focus and the interaction between syntax and pragmatics. Edited by D. Bury, K. Froud, R. Horsey and K. Szendroi. 227-388.
  • 2003 Selection and head chains. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 15, 177-211.
  • 2002 Phrase structure and inversion in verb-second and verb-initial languages. In Proceedings of the 2002 LSK International Summer Conference, 211-222.
  • 2002 A reinterpretation of the loss of verb-second in Welsh. In D.W. Lightfoot, ed. Syntactic effects of morphological change, Oxford University Press, 215-231.
  • 2001 German V3 and the origin of adverbs. Snippets Issue 4, 8-9.
  • 2000 Particles, V2 and the ungrammaticality of verb-initial structures. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 12, 367-386.
  • 2000 Effects of self-attachment and the status of functional projections. Snippets Issue 2, 8-10.

Conference papers (2007)

  • 2007 (D. Bury and H. Uchida) Verb-second without feature checking. LAGB Annual Meeting (29-August-1 September), King's College London.
  • 2007 (D. Bury and M. Deuchar) The notion clause in “intra-clausal” code-switching. LAGB Annual Meeting (29-August-1 September), King's College London.
  • 2007 (D. Bury and H. Uchida) Constituent Structure Sets. Mathematics of Language 10 (28-30 July), University of California, Los Angeles.
  • 2007 The visibility of preverbal particles in Spoken Welsh. Fourteenth Welsh Syntax Meeting (9-10 July), Gregynog, Wales.2007 (M. Deuchar, D. Bury, E. Robert, P. Davies and J. Stammers) Welsh-English code-switching: A clause-based analysis. Sixth International Symposium on Bilingualism (May 30 - June 2), University of Hamburg.
  • 2007 Verb-initial orders and obligatory specifiers, Workshop on V1 and V2 (April 19-20), Leiden University. (Invited speaker)
  • 2007 What is a bilingual clause? Colloquium on Language Contact, Language Change, Gregynog, Wales (March 17-19)