Professor Paul Rowlett

Professor of French Language & Linguistics, and Head of School of Humanities, Languages & Social Sciences

• Maxwell 840
• T: 0161 295 4131
• E: p.a.rowlett@salford.ac.uk
• SEEK: Research profile

By arrangement with Edna Higginbotham (e.higginbotham@salford.ac.uk; 0161 295 3616)

I read modern languages (French and German) at the University of Bradford (UK) from 1984 to 1988 and graduated with first-class combined honours, the German politics prize, and an honorary life membership of the students' union. After a short time working as a translator and interpreter in France, I returned to the UK in 1989 for a British Academy-funded Masters degree in linguistics at the University of York. From York I moved to Salford in 1990 where, more than two decades later, and after brief periods in visiting positions in Belgium and France, I remain. After five years as Head of the School of Languages (2006—2011) I am now Professor of French Language & Linguistics and Head of the School of Humanities, Languages & Social Sciences.

Outside Salford I am editor of the Transactions of the Philological Society, a peer-reviewed journal published for the Society by Wiley—Blackwell, and a member of the advisory editorial board of the Journal of French Language Studies, a peer-reviewed journal published on behalf of the Association for French Language Studies by Cambridge University Press.

Previously I was chair of the linguistics specialist advisory group of the UK Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, chair of the Linguistics Strategy Group, treasurer of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain (LAGB) and of the University Council of Modern Languages, and member of the LAGB education committee. I was also the founding chair of the University Council of General and Applied Linguistics, and was a member of the linguistics team within the EU-funded HUMART project (sectoral qualifications framework for the humanities and the applied and fine arts).

My teaching focused on French language, translation and interpreting studies, and linguistics. In brief I have taught undergraduate and postgraduate linguistics at Salford, as well as at the Universities of Manchester, York and Toulouse-le Mirail, and various aspects of French language and translation and interpreting at Salford, the Institut Supérieur de Traducteurs et Interprètes (Brussels) and Toulouse-le Mirail.

My research focuses on French language and linguistics. I have published a number of single- and joint-authored books, as well as chapters in books, edited collections, entries in encyclopaedias, and articles and book reviews in refereed journals. Since 2008 I have surveyed academic publications in French language and linguistics for "The year's work in modern language studies" (Modern Humanities Research Association). Several of my publications (or, in some cases, pre-publication versions) are available for download from: usir.salford.ac.uk.

BA in French and German with first-class combined honours (Bradford, 1988)

MA in linguistics (York, 1990)

DPhil in linguistics (York, 1996)

(1993) On the syntactic derivation of negative sentence adverbials. Journal of French Language Studies 3.1: 39–69.

(1998) Sentential negation in French. Oxford University Press. 233 pp.

(1998) A non-overt negative operator in French. Probus 10.2: 185–206.

(2000) (With Adrian Battye & Marie-Anne Hintze) The French language today: a linguistic introduction, 2nd edn. London: Rout­ledge. 360 pp.

(2007) The syntax of French. Cambridge University Press. 254 pp.

(2007) Cinque’s functional verbs in French. Language Sciences 29.6: 755–86.

(2010—2013) French studies: language and linguistics. The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies, vols 70—73.

(2011) The early absence of the French negative marker ne. In Pierre Larrivée and Richard Ingham (eds) The evolution of negation: beyond the Jespersen cycle, 209–20. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

(2012) (With Janet CE Watson) Negation in Mehri, stages of Jespersen’s Cycle. In Domenyk Eades (ed.) Grammaticalization in Semitic (Journal of Semitic Studies, supplement 29), 205–25. Oxford University Press.

(2013) (With Benjamin Massot) (eds) L’hypothèse d’une diglossie en France. Special issue, Journal of French Language Studies 23.1: 1–149, including: (with Benjamin Massot) Le débat sur la diglossie en France: aspects scientifiques et politiques, 1–16; and Do French speakers really have two grammars?, 37–57.