Nigel Vincent (born 24 September 1947) is a British

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 ...

. He is Professor Emeritus of General and Romance Linguistics 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 ...

. He is best known for his work on

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...

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 ...

, and

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 ...

, with particular focus on the

Romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...

. Vincent was elected a Fellow of the

British Academy The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the sa ...

in 2006, and was Vice-President for Research and HE Policy at the Academy from 2010 to 2014. In 2013, he was elected a Member of the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

. Until 2011, he held the

Mont Follick Montefiore Follick (31 December 1887 – 10 December 1958) was a British Labour Party (UK), Labour Party politician, a campaigner for spelling reform, polyglot and advocate of decimal currency. He was Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Memb ...

Chair of Comparative Philology in th
School of Languages, Linguistics & Cultures
at the

. From 2000 to 2003, he was President of the

Philological Society The Philological Society, or London Philological Society, is the oldest learned society in Great Britain dedicated to the study of language as well as a registered charity. The current Society was established in 1842 to "investigate and promote ...

. He was the chair of Main Panel M in the

Research Assessment Exercise The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) was an exercise undertaken approximately every five years on behalf of the four UK higher education funding councils ( HEFCE, SHEFC, HEFCW, DELNI) to evaluate the quality of research undertaken by British ...

, 2008. In 2007, Vincent was honoured with a

Festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

Bentley, D. and A. Ledgeway (eds) (2007) Sui dialetti italo-romanzi. Saggi in onore di Nigel B. Vincent (Special supplement number 1 to ''The Italianist'' 27). King's Lynn, Norfolk: Biddles Ltd, 316 pp., ISSN 0261-4340. with contributions by colleagues and former students.

References

Partial bibliography

*Ledgeway, A., Smith, J.C. and Vincent, N., eds. ''Periphrasis and Inflexion in Diachrony. A View from Romance''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. *Adams, J.N. and Vincent, N., eds. ''Early and Late Latin. Continuity or Change?''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. *Benincà, P., Ledgeway, A., and Vincent, N., eds. ''Dialects and Diachrony: Grammatical Changes in the Dialects of Italy''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. *Börjars, K. and Vincent. N. Grammaticalization and directionality. In ''The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization'', ed. H. Narrog and B. Heine, 163-176. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. *Matras, Y., McMahon, A. and Vincent, N., eds. ''Linguistic Areas''. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006. *van Kemenade, A. and Vincent, N., eds. ''Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. *Benincà, P., Cinque, G., De Mauro, T. and Vincent, N., eds. ''Italiano e dialetti nel tempo''. Rome: Bulzoni, 1996.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Vincent, Nigel Linguists from the United Kingdom Fellows of the British Academy Members of Academia Europaea Living people People educated at Sexey's School 1947 births Presidents of the Philological Society