Sarah Gordon

Trinity Hall
  • PhD student
Sarah Gordon

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About

Sarah is a PhD student in the department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. Her research interests include language variation and change, language acquisition, syntax, information structure, sign language linguistics and the link between language acquisition and language change. She has experience using both corpus and experimental methods and has conducted research in historical linguistics and language acquisition. 

Sarah's research topic 'Null subjects and information structure in British Sign Language and the history of English' is supervised by Dr Marieke Meelen and Professor Ianthi Tsimpli. Her Advisor is Professor Adam Schembri. 

Scholarships/Prizes 

ESRC DTP 1+3 studentship match funded by Trinity Hall.

Posters

Gordon, S. (2025) The loss of null subjects in Old and early Middle English: the role of information structure. 26th Diachronic Generative Syntax conference (DiGS26), University of Oxford. 

Conference Papers

Gordon, S. and Willis, D. (2022) The geospatial diffusion of innovative forms of ‘she’ in Middle English through time.            Linguistics Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (LAGB), Ulster University, Belfast.

Publications 

Gordon, S. (2022) A Diachronic Study of the Pre- and Post-Verbal Distribution of Prepositional Phrases in Latin. Cambridge Occasional Papers in Linguistics vol. 14(1), pp. 34-87.

 

Research

Sarah is researching the distribution of null and overt subjects in British Sign Language and Old and early Middle English, looking at grammatical, semantic, discourse and social factors. Similarities in the distribution of null subjects in two such typologically diverse languages will give insight into the core properties of null subjects. Differences between the two languages will enrich our understanding of the cross-linguistic variation in null subject languages. As null subjects are virtually non-existent after the earliest period of Middle English, this project will also shed light on how null subjects are lost from a language. 

Teaching and supervision

2025          Supervisor for Li4 (Linguistic variation and change)

2024-2025 Supervisor for Li15 (First and Second Language Acquisition)

Other activities and roles

Co-organiser of the Historical Linguistics Reading Group

Research Assistant on British Sign Language Definition Task Project (Project Lead: Dr Patrick Rosenburg)