Elly Van Gelderen

Elly van Gelderen is a syntactician interested in language change. Her work shows how regular syntactic change (grammaticalization and the linguistic cycle) provides insight in the Faculty of Language. Her 2011 book, "The Linguistic Cycle: Language Change and the Language Faculty" (Oxford University Press) shows how cyclical change can be accounted for through an economy principle. Her "Clause Structure" (Cambridge University Press, 2013) examines a number of current debates in theoretical syntax. She worked on the history of argument structure, e.g. how unaccusatives and unergatives change in very different directions in "The Diachrony of Meaning" (Routledge 2018). Her most recent books are "Third Factors in Variation and Change" (CUP, 2022) and another book on "The Linguistic Cycle" (Routledge, 2023). Related interests are the evolution of language, biolinguistics, prescriptivism, authorship debates, forensic linguistics, and code switching.

Elly van Gelderen is the author of 13 books, 12 edited volumes, and 100 or so articles/chapters in journals such as Linguistic Analysis, Studia Linguistica, Word, and Linguistic Inquiry. She taught at ASU from 1995 to 2023 and is currently Regents' Professor Emeritus.