Dr Marc Olivier
Biography
I am Departmental Lecturer in French Linguistics and Linguistics Organising Tutor at St John’s College. Prior to this, I held teaching positions at Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University. I graduated with a MSc and a PhD in linguistics (historical syntax) from Ulster University.
Teaching
I teach on Paper IV and Paper V on the Oxford course, linguistics, syntax, French, historical linguistics, Phonology, Morphology and Phonetics.
Research Interests
I work at the intersection of theoretical syntax and language change. The focus of my research is on identifying the microparameters that drive change in Mediaeval Romance languages. During my PhD, I created a corpus of legal texts to investigate the evolution of clitic placement and cliticisation in Old and Middle French, and I now work on the diachrony of the structure of infinitival clauses and restructuring clauses in Gallo-Romance.
Selected publications
Olivier, M. forthcoming. 'Diachronie de la proclise et de l'enclise avec l'infinitif en français médiéval (12e-15e s.)', Studia Linguistica Romanica. DOI: 10.25364/19.2022.8.2
Olivier, M. 2022. A Corpus Study of Clitic Placement with Infinitives in the Diachrony of French. PhD Thesis, Ulster University.
Olivier, M. 2021. 'Language in time: assessing Medieval French registers in a quest for accuracy in historical linguistics', French Studies Bulletin.
Awards and distinctions
Doctoral Award: Best research project being undertaken by a doctoral student in a Higher Education institution on the island of Ireland (ADEFFI 2020).
I am a member of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (LAGB).