Richard Stockwell

Linguist

I am a Lecturer in Linguistics at Ulster University.

I studied at the University of Cambridge and the University of California, Los Angeles, and was a postdoctoral Junior Research Fellow of Christ Church, University of Oxford.

I work on syntax and semantics. Topics include ellipsis, dialect syntax, free relative clauses, and Condition C reconstruction.

Contact me at: r.stockwell@ulster.ac.uk

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Research by topic

Ellipsis

Contrast and verb phrase ellipsis: triviality, symmetry, and competition.
Dissertation, s-side h/o, generalist h/o.
    Triviality and contrast in ellipsis. NaLS, Chapter 2, SALT 28.
    • * If John comes, he does come.
    VP ellipsis with symmetrical predicates. Submitted, Chapter 3, MA, NELS 47.
    • John wanted to dance with Mary; but Mary didn’t want to dance with John.
    "MaxElide" effects. Chapter 4.
    • John should eat something, but I don't know what (*he should).
    Double ellipsis and the dissociation of recoverability and identity. WCCFL42.
    • The university appoints vice chancellors, but the regulations don't say *(when VCs are appointed, or) by whom VCs are appointed.
    Why not? and ellipsis. Accepted.
    • A: I thought Mary would arrive on time.   B: Why didn't she?   B': *Why not?
    Contradiction, ellipsis, and voice mismatch. Glossa, SuB 26.
    • This information should have been released (by Gorbachev), but Gorbachev didn't (release it).
    • This information was released (#by Gorbachev), but Gorbachev didn't *(release it).
    "Metalinguistic" ellipsis in adverts and slogans. Accepted.
    • It is. Are you?   Yes We Can!   Everyday vehicles that aren't.
    Small clause predicates and sluicing. En bref.
    • The sign says [buy one get one free] but it doesn’t specify which items [ t are [SC t bogof]].
    Sprouting and the structure of except-phrases. With Deborah Wong. NELS 50, Sluicing+@50.
    • Everybody liked the movie, except John, but I don’t know why John didn't like the movie.
    Causative VP-omission in English. With Matt Tyler. Minor revisions, LSA 2022, NELS 52
    • First I made/let/had John eat dinner, then I made/let/*had Mary.
    • Null Complement Anaphora, A-bar extraction made us conclude this is. *Ellipsis, it didn't make us.

    English dialect syntax

    Objectless Locative Prepositions in British English. With Carson T. Schütze and Anke Himmelreich. CGSW35, LSA 2019.
    • The box with papers in. - N.B. no it!
    Dialects haven't got to be the same: modal microvariation in English. With Carson T. Schütze. LSA 2019.
    • %You haven't got to leave.
    Possessive preproprial determiners in North-West British English. BLS 43.
    • Our John came for tea yesterday.

    Free relatives

    Nuances in English who free relative clauses. With Carson T. Schütze. ELL, Accepted.
    • That's who broke into my house! vs. ?*Who met Chris left early.
    Transparent Free Relatives with Who. With Carson T. Schütze. LSA 2019.
    • I once saw who I thought was Robert Redford at a Starbucks.
    Free relatives in Minimalist Grammars. Berlin handout, ESSLLI proceedings.
    • How does [what Sam ate] get to be a DP?
    Labelling in syntax. COPIL 9.
    • Chomsky's Labelling Algorithm, crash-proof syntax, and free relatives.

    Various

    Condition C reconstruction, experimentally. With Aya Meltzer-Asscher and Dominique Sportiche. WCCFL42, NELS 52, NELS 51
    • Which picture of Harry did he frame? *he = Harry.
    • Which picture arranged by Harry did he frame? okhe = Harry.
    Skills-based grading: a novel approach to teaching formal semantics. With Maura O'Leary. American Speech, Accepted, Materials, LSA 2021 (Student Abstract Award, 3rd place).
    • Multiple opportunities, but no partial credit.
    Say-ing without a Voice. With Travis Major. NELS 51.
    • It says "Slow down!" on the sign. vs. *They say "Slow down!" on the signs.
    Quotative dip in Kazan Tatar. Tu+3.
    • (Lack of) indexical shift in Kazan Tatar.
    Emergence of the faithful by consonant copying in a Tagalog language game. AFLA 24.
    • hawák-an → kanháwak, 'take hold of something'
    Gerund imperatives. ConSOLE XXIV, pp. 282-296.
    • No walking on the grass!
    Emergent syntax: insights from imperatives. Cambridge MPhil.
    • And don't you forget it!

    Research chronologically

    Journal articles

    Stockwell, Richard, & Matthew Tyler. accepted. Causative VP-omission, agency, and Null Complement Anaphora in English. Accepted with minor revisions at Linguistic Inquiry. (manuscript)

    Stockwell, Richard. accepted. Elliptical why not. Syntax Syntactic Theory & Research. (accepted)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2024. Ellipsis, contradiction and voice mismatch. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 9(1) pp. 1–21. (link)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2023. Small clause predicates and sluicing. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue Canadienne De Linguistique 68(2): 304-306. (link)

    O’Leary, Maura, & Richard Stockwell. 2022. Implementing Skills-Based Grading in a linguistics course. Teaching American Speech 97(2): 247–262. (link, accepted)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2022. Contrast and verb phrase ellipsis: The case of tautologous conditionals. Natural Language Semantics 30: 77-100. (link)

    Stockwell, Richard, & Carson T. Schütze. 2022. The puzzling nuanced status of who free relative clauses in English: A follow-up to Patterson and Caponigro (2015). English Language and Linguistics 26(1): 185-202. (link, accepted)

    Dissertation

    Stockwell, Richard. 2020. Contrast and Verb Phrase Ellipsis: Triviality, Symmetry, and Competition. PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. (link)

    Book chapters

    Stockwell, Richard. accepted. Metalinguistic ellipsis: playful silence in adverts, titles, and slogans. Footprints of Phrase Structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (accepted)

    Stockwell, Richard, Carson T. Schütze & Anke Himmelreich. accepted. An extraction restriction with complement-less prepositions in British English but not dialectal German. To appear in Ermenegildo Bidese & Federica Cognola (eds.), Germanic syntax from a comparative perspective. Language Science Press. (accepted)

    Submitted manuscripts

    Stockwell, Richard. in revision. Symmetrical predicates in verb phrase ellipsis. For resubmission to Journal of Linguistics. (draft)

    Proceedings papers

    Stockwell, Richard, Aya Meltzer-Asscher & Dominique Sportiche. accepted. Condition C, pronoun strength, and the raising analysis of relative clauses. Proceedings of the 42nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. (accepted)

    Stockwell, Richard. accepted. Recoverability and identity are dissociable in double ellipsis. Proceedings of the 42nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. (accepted)

    Stockwell, Richard, Aya Meltzer-Asscher & Dominique Sportiche. 2022. Experimental evidence for the Condition C argument-adjunct asymmetry in English questions. In Özge Bakay, Breanna Pratley, Eva Neu and Peyton Deal (eds.), NELS 52: Proceedings of the Fifty-Second Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, Volume 3, pp. 145-158. GLSA. (osf, accepted)

    Stockwell, Richard, & Matthew Tyler. 2022. Causative VP-omission in English. In Özge Bakay, Breanna Pratley, Eva Neu and Peyton Deal (eds.), NELS 52: Proceedings of the Fifty-Second Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, Volume 3, pp. 135-144. GLSA. (osf, accepted)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2022. Contradiction and ellipsis licensing with voice mismatch and symmetry. In Daniel Gutzmann & Sophie Repp (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 26, pp. 809-823. Universität zu Köln. (link)

    Stockwell, Richard, Aya Meltzer-Asscher & Dominique Sportiche. 2021. There is reconstruction for Condition C in English questions. In Alessa Farinella and Angelica Hill (eds.), NELS 51: Proceedings of the Fifty-First Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, Volume Two, pp. 205-214. GLSA. (accepted, slides)

    Major, Travis, & Richard Stockwell. 2020. Say-ing without a Voice. In Alessa Farinella and Angelica Hill (eds.), NELS 51: Proceedings of the Fifty-First Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, Volume Two, 77-90. GLSA. (accepted)

    O’Leary, Maura, & Richard Stockwell. 2021. Skills-based grading: a novel approach to teaching formal semantics. In Patrick Farrell (ed.), Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 6(1): 869–881. (Student Abstract Award, 3rd place) (link, materials)

    Stockwell, Richard, & Deborah J.M. Wong. 2020. Sprouting and the structure of except-phrases. In Mariam Asatryan, Yixiao Song and Ayana Whitmal (eds.), Proceedings of the Fiftieth Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS 50), Volume Three, pp. 169-182. GLSA. (accepted)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2019. Free relatives, feature recycling, and reprojection in Minimalist Grammars. In Jennifer Sikos and Eric Pacuit (eds.), At the Intersection of Language, Logic, and Information. ESSLLI 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11667, 157-170. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. (link)

    Stockwell, Richard, & Carson T. Schütze. 2019. Dialects “haven’t got” to be the same: modal microvariation in English. In Patrick Farrell (ed.), Proceedings of 93rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Volume 4, 31: 1-15. (link)

    Schütze, Carson T., & Richard Stockwell. 2019. Transparent free relatives with who: Support for a unified analysis. In Patrick Farrell (ed.), Proceedings of 93rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Volume 4, 40: 1-6. (link)

    Stockwell, Richard, & Carson T. Schütze. 2019. Objectless locative prepositions in British English. In Patrick Farrell (ed.), Proceedings of 93rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Volume 4, 48: 1-15. (link)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2019. Emergence of the faithful by consonant copying in a Tagalog language game. In Matt Pearson (ed.), Papers from the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association 24, special publication of the Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, Volume 12, 3: 68-81. (link)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2018. Ellipsis in tautologous conditionals: the contrast condition on ellipsis. In Sireemas Maspong, Brynhildur Stefánsdóttir, Katherine Blake and Forrest Davis (eds.), Proceedings of the 28th Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference, pp. 584-603. (link)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2018. Quotative dip in Kazan Tatar. In Betül Erbaşı, Sozen Ozkan & Iara Mantenuto (eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Turkish, Turkic and the Languages of Turkey (Tu+3). UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 19, article 5. (link)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2017. VP ellipsis with symmetrical predicates. In Andrew Lamont & Katerina Tetzlof (eds.), NELS 47: Proceedings of the Forty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, Volume 3, pp. 141-154. GLSA. (accepted)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2017. Possessive preproprial determiners in North-West British English. In Julia Nee, Margaret Cychosz, Dmetri Hayes, Tyler Lau & Emily Remirez (eds.), Proceedings of the forty-third annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, pp. 301-315. Berkeley Linguistics Society. (link)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2016. Gerund imperatives. In Kate Bellamy, Elena Karvovskaya & George Saad, (eds.), ConSOLE XXIV: Proceedings of the 24th Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe, pp. 282-296. Leiden: Leiden University Centre for Linguistics. (link)

    Other talks

    Stockwell, Richard. 2023. Recoverability and identity are dissociable in double ellipsis. Talk at the Boundaries of Ellipsis Mismatch Workshop, Tsuda University, 1-3 September. (handout)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2023. Recoverability and identity are dissociable in double ellipsis. Talk in the You're on mute! online ellipsis seminar series, 31 March. (handout)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2022. Recoverability and identity are dissociable in double ellipsis. Talk at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain (LAGB 2022), Ulster University, 12-15 September. (handout)

    Stockwell, Richard, & Matthew Tyler. 2022. Causative VP-omission in English. Talk at the 96th Linguistic Society of America, 6-9 January. 2022. (handout)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2020-21. Contrast and verb phrase ellipsis: triviality, symmetry, and competition. (s-side h/o, generalist h/o).

    Stockwell, Richard. 2021. Contradiction and ellipsis: voice mismatch and symmetry. Talk at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain (LAGB 2021), online, 6-9 September. (handout)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2021. 'Why not?' and ellipsis. Talk at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain (LAGB 2021), online, 6-9 September. (handout)

    Stockwell, Richard, Carson T. Schütze & Anke Himmelreich. 2021. An extraction restriction with complement-less prepositions in British English but not dialectal German. Talk at the 35th Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop (CGSW35), University of Trento (online), 23-25 June. (see accepted)

    Stockwell, Richard, & Deborah Wong. 2019. Elided antecedents: sprouting with except-phrases. Poster at the Sluicing and Ellipsis at 50 workshop (Sluicing+@50), University of Chicago, 12-13 April. (poster)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2019. Intensionality, contrast and ellipsis. Talk at the 43rd Penn Linguistics Conference (PLC 43), University of Pennsylvania, 22-24 March. (handout)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2018. A view of free relatives from Minimalist Grammars. Talk at the workshop on long-distance dependencies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 4-5 October. (handout)

    Cambridge papers

    Stockwell, Richard. 2016. Labelling in syntax. In András Bárány & Jessica Brown (eds.), Cambridge Occasional Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 9, pp. 130-155. Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of Cambridge. (link)

    Stockwell, Richard. 2015. Emergent syntax: insights from imperatives. MPhil thesis, University of Cambridge, Pembroke College. (thesis)