David W. E. Willis is a

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

and

Celticist Celtic studies or Celtology is the academic discipline occupied with the study of any sort of cultural output relating to the Celtic-speaking peoples (i.e. speakers of Celtic languages). This ranges from linguistics, literature and art history ...

. In 2020 he took up the post of Jesus Professor of Celtic at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

. He had previously held posts in

historical linguistics Historical linguistics, also known as diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of how languages change over time. It seeks to understand the nature and causes of linguistic change and to trace the evolution of languages. Historical li ...

at the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

and at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

, where he was a Fellow of Selwyn College. He was a Junior Research Fellow at

Somerville College, Oxford Somerville College is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. It was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. It began admitting men in 1994. The colle ...

. In 2022, he was elected a

Fellow of the British Academy Fellowship of the British Academy (post-nominal letters FBA) is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The categories are: # Fellows – scholars resident in t ...

(FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.

Education

Willis completed a BA in Russian and German and an MPhil in General Linguistics at

St John's College, Oxford St John's College is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford. Founded as a men's college in 1555, it has been coeducational since 1979.Communication from Michael Riordan, college archivist Its foun ...

before transferring to Jesus College for his DPhil on the history of word order in the Welsh language, completed in 1996. Ellis Evans, one of Willis's predecessors in the Jesus Chair of Celtic, served as his doctoral supervisor.

Research

Willis's research is in the areas of

language change Language change is the process of alteration in the features of a single language, or of languages in general, over time. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistic ...

and

syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

, with particular reference to the

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language *Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Foot ...

and

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...

as well as to English. The synchronic and diachronic syntax of Welsh has been a particular focus: his first book was on the loss of verb-second in the history of Welsh, and he has co-authored a textbook on the syntax of the present-day language. He is also an expert in the syntax of

negation In logic, negation, also called the logical not or logical complement, is an operation (mathematics), operation that takes a Proposition (mathematics), proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P, P^\prime or \over ...

and on

Jespersen's cycle Jespersen's cycle is a series of processes in historical linguistics, which describe the historical development of the expression of negation in a variety of languages, from a simple pre-verbal marker of negation, through a discontinuous marker (e ...

cross-linguistically.

Selected publications

* Willis, David. 1998. ''Syntactic change in Welsh: A study of the loss of verb-second''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Willis, David. 2000. On the distribution of resumptive pronouns and ''wh''-trace in Welsh. ''Journal of Linguistics'' 36(3), 531–573. * Borsley, Robert, Maggie Tallerman, and David Willis. 2007. ''The syntax of Welsh''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * Willis, David. 2007. Syntactic lexicalization as a new type of degrammaticalization. ''Linguistics'' 45(2), 271–310. * Breitbarth, Anne, Christopher Lucas, Sheila Watts, and David Willis (eds.). 2009. ''Continuity and change in grammar''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. * Willis, David, Christopher Lucas, and Anne Breitbarth (eds.). 2013. ''The history of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, Volume I: Case studies''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Breitbarth, Anne, David Willis, and Christopher Lucas (eds.). 2020. ''The history of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, Volume II: Patterns and processes''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Willis, David Linguists from the United Kingdom Fellows of Jesus College, Oxford Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford Celtic studies scholars Jesus Professors of Celtic Welsh-speaking academics Living people Alumni of St John's College, Oxford Alumni of Jesus College, Oxford Academics of the University of Manchester Fellows of Selwyn College, Cambridge Fellows of the British Academy Year of birth missing (living people)