Dr Marc Olivier-Loiseau

I am a Lecturer in Linguistics based at the University of Oxford, UK. I am the Linguisitics Organising Tutor of St John's College and St Catherine's College.

On top of the research I undertake in my institution, I am an Associate Researcher of the Maison Française d'Oxford and a member of the CLESTHIA research team at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris.

I currently sit on the Executive Committee of Societas Linguistica Europaea, the largest linguistics society in Europe.

***

My research lies at the intersection of formal syntax and historical linguistics, with a focus on Romance languages. I also have published on synchronic theoretical syntax and comparative linguistics. I am particularly interested in clitics, clause size, infinitives, and auxiliary selection.

Prior to my current post, I held research and teaching positions at Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University. I have a PhD in Linguistics, with specialisation in historical syntax. In 2023, I was awarded a Seal of Excellence by the European Commission in recognition of the quality of my research.

Where to meet me

• Trinity Term - Oxford. 

  • I'll give a talk at the General Linguistics Seminar, join us if you want to hear more about my latest work.

• Weekly during term time - Oxford. 

  • I convene a weekly Occitan reading group. All welcome! This term (HT25) we're meeting every tuesday at 5pm in the MML Faculty. 

• 10 May 2025 - Oxford. 

  • I am organising the third edition of the Occitan Studies Day at the Maison Française d'Oxford. Sign up!

• 23 to 26 June 2025 - Oxford. 

  • I am organising DiGS26 in Oxford. The conference will feature a workshop entitled Investigating diachronic syntax with less-documented and unwritten languages: methods and theory. It's too late to submit an abstract, but I hope you can attend!

• 26 to 29 August 2025 - Bordeaux. 

  • I am co-organising a workshop at the 58th edition of Societas Linguistica Europaea. It is entitled Diachronic Studies on Minoritised and Under-researched Romance Varieties. The abstract submission platform is now closed.

  • I am also co-organising the Outreach session of the SLE with Alexandru Nicolae (University of Bucharest).

  • I will also present recent research on the grammaticalisation of Wh-elements as polarity items.

News

• Article. I have a new paper published in Probus (Open Access). It's a syntactic (minimalist) analysis of auxiliary selection in French, in which I argue against the traditional hypothesis that argument structure plays a part.

• Article. In February 2025, my paper on clitic placement and infinitive placement in Old French was published in the Journal of Historical Syntax (Open Access). I demonstrate that French initially displayed the patterns found in Italian, Spanish, and Catalan (enclisis and high infinitives) before changes in the sound system led to further changes in the grammar. 

• Article. I am currently working with Anna Paradís on an article that questions to nature of infinitival complementizers in a variety of Romance languages (we analyse data from Catalan, Spanish, Romanian, Old French, and Old Italian).

• Article. Following the talks I gave at SLE57, ICL2024, and the Cambridge Romance Linguistics seminar, I'm currently working on an article on auxiliary switch in the diachrony of French. It will build on my Probus article. I'm happy to share drafts if you're interested.

• Special issue. I am editing a special issue of the Catalan Journal of Linguistics with Afra Pujol i Campeny, titled Crosslinguistic perspectives on syntactic change in the diachrony of Romance. The call for papers is available here, if you want to submit an article.

• Special issue. I am editing a special issue of Revue Romane with Anna Paradís, which will feature interdisciplinary research on Occitan. The issue is planned for publication for Autumn 2025 and will include contributions in several languages, watch this space!