You are here:

Professor Dunstan Brown

Professor of Linguistics

Qualifications: Ph.D in Linguistics (University of Surrey). MLing (University of Manchester). BA in Modern Languages (University of Manchester)

Email:
Phone: Work: 01483 68 9957
Room no: 01 AC 05

Further information

Biography


 

Member of the Surrey Morphology Group

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Research Interests

  • Morphology
  • Morphology-Syntax interaction
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Ontologies for Linguistics
  • Typology
  • Oceanic Language
  • Slavonic Languages

Publications

Journal articles

  • Fedden S, Brown D, Corbett GG, Holton G, Klamer M, Robinson LC, Schapper A. (2013) 'Conditions on pronominal marking in the Alor-Pantar languages'. De Gruyter Linguistics, 51 (1), pp. 33-74.
    doi: 10.1515/ling-2013-0002
  • Brown DP, Chumakina, M , Corbett G, Popova, G. , Spencer, A. . (2012) 'Defining ‘periphrasis’: key notions'. Morphology, 22 (2), pp. 233-275.
    doi: 10.1007/s11525-012-9201-5
  • Krasovitsky A, Baerman M, Brown D, Corbett GG. (2011) 'Changing semantic factors in case selection: Russian evidence from the last two centuries'. Morphology, 21 (3), pp. 573-592.
    doi: 10.1007/s11525-010-9178-x
  • Krasovitsky , Baerman , Brown D, Corbett G. (2010) 'Changing semantic factors in case selection: Russian evidence from the last two centuries'. Morphology, Online First, pp. 1-20.
    doi: 10.1007/s11525-010-9178-x
  • Krasovitsky A, Long A, Baerman M, Brown D, Corbett GG. (2008) 'Predicate nouns in Russian'. Russian Linguistics, 32, pp. 99-113.
    doi: 10.1007/s11185-008-9025-4
  • Brown DP. (2008) 'Review: Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel and Gisela Zifonun (eds), Explorations in nominal inflection. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2004'. Word Structure, 1, pp. 237-244.
    doi: 10.3366/E175012450800024X
  • Brown D, Tiberius C, Corbett GG. (2007) 'The Alignment of Form and Function: Corpus-based evidence from Russian'. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 12, pp. 511-534.
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1320/
  • Palmer W, Brown D. (2007) 'Heads in Oceanic indirect possession'. Oceanic Linguistics, 46, pp. 200-209.
  • Brown D. (2007) 'Peripheral functions and overdifferentiation: The Russian second locative'. Russian Linguistics, 31 (1), pp. 61-76.
    doi: 10.1007/s11185-006-0715-5
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1334/
  • Brown D, Hippisley A, Chumakina M, Corbett GG. (2004) 'Suppletion: Frequency, categories and distribution of stems'. Studies in Language, 28 (2), pp. 387-418.
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/2229/
  • Brown D. (2004) 'Review: Jae Jung Song, Linguistic typology: morphology and syntax. Harlow: Longman'. Journal of Linguistics 40, , pp. 198-200.
  • Brown D. (2004) 'Review: R.M.W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds), Word: a cross-linguistic typology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press'. Journal of Linguistics, 40, pp. 409-415.
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1327/
  • Evans N, Brown D, Corbett GG. (2002) 'The Semantics of Gender in Mayali: partially parallel systems and formal implementation'. Language, 78 (1), pp. 111-155.
  • Brown DP. (1998) 'Defining 'subgender': virile and devirilised nouns in Polish'. Lingua, 104, pp. 187-233.
  • Brown DP. (1997) 'Review: Robert Beard, Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology. A General Theory of Inflection and Word Formation. Albany: State University of New York Press'. Linguistics, 35, pp. 597-600.
  • Brown DP, Corbett GG, Fraser N, Timberlake A. (1996) 'Russian Noun Stress and Network Morphology'. Linguistics, 34 (1), pp. 53-107.
  • Brown DP. (1995) 'Review: Dominiek Sandra, Morphology in the reader's mental lexicon. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1994'. Lexicology, 2, pp. 332-333.
  • Brown DP. (1995) 'Setevaja morfologija i russkaja glagol'naja sistema'. ser. 9. Filologija Edition. Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta, ser. 9. Filologija, 6, pp. 91-108.
  • Brown D, Hippisley A. (1994) 'Conflict in Russian Genitive Plural Assignment: A Solution Represented in DATR'. Slavica Publishers Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 2 (1), pp. 48-76.
    doi: 10.1007/s11525-012-9201-5
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/7522/

    Abstract

    Inflectional endings are assigned in languages by general principles, but these can come into conflict. We address the question of how such conflict is resolved. A particularly complex example is the Russian genitive plural, where we find that with soft-stem nouns there is a conflict between exponent assignment according to declension class and a default exponent assignment for soft-stem nouns. What is specially interesting is that the conflict here can be resolved by reference to subsystems over and above the paradigm, such as stress. We present an explicit account of the conflict and its mediation by basing our study on default inheritance. For this purpose we make use of the lexical knowledge representation language DATR. This allows us to demonstrate in the output provided that the correct forms are indeed predicted by our theory.

Conference papers

  • Brown DP, Evans R. (2010) 'Inflectional Defaults and Principal Parts: an Empirical Investigation'. In: Stefan Müller (ed.) Stanford : CSLI Proceedings of the HPSG10 Conference, Université Paris Diderot, Paris 7, France: 17th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar HPSG10, pp. 234-254. [Available at: http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/HPSG/2010/toc.shtml], pp. 234-254.
  • Brown D, Tiberius C, Corbett GG. (2004) 'Inflectional Syncretism and Corpora'. Geneva : 5th International Workshop on Linguistically Interpreted Corpora (LINC-04) held at the 20th International Conference on Computational Linguistics
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1059/
  • Evans R, Tiberius C, Brown D, Corbett GG. (2003) 'Russian Lemmatisation with DATR'. Bratislava : Slovko '03
  • Brown D, Evans N, Tiberius C, Corbett GG. (2003) 'A large-scale inheritance based morphological lexicon for Russian'. Budapest : EACL Budapest: In: T. Erjavec and D. Vitas (eds.) Proceedings of the Workshop on morphological processing of Slavic Languages, 10th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 9-16.
  • Brown D, Tiberius C, Corbett GG. (2002) 'A typological database of agreement'. Las Palmas, Spain : Las Palmas: LREC2002, the Third International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, pp. pp1843-pp1846.
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1070/
  • Brown D. (2001) 'Constructing a typological database for inflectional morphology: the SMG database for syncretism.'. Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, University of Pennsylvania : Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, University of Pennsylvania Proceedings of the IRCS/National Science Foundation Workshop on Linguistic Databases, Philadelphia: IRCS/National Science Foundation Workshop on Linguistic Databases, pp. 56-64.
  • Evans N, Brown D, Corbett GG. (1998) 'Emu Divorce: A Unified Account of Gender and Noun Class Assignment in Mayali'. Chicago Linguistic Society In: M. Catherine Gruber, Derrick Higgins, Kenneth S. Olson & Tamra Wysocki (eds). Papers from 34th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago: 34th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, pp. 147-172.

Books

  • Brown D, Chumakina M, Corbett GG. (2012) Canonical Morphology and Syntax. Oxford University Press
  • Brown DP, Hippisley AR. (2012) Network Morphology. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press
  • Baerman M, Corbett GG, Brown D. (2010) Defective Paradigms: missing forms and what they tell us. Oxford : Oxford University Press 163
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/713583/

    Abstract

    An important design feature of language is the use of productive patterns in inflection. In English, we have pairs such as 'enjoy' ~ 'enjoyed', 'agree' ~ 'agreed', and many others. On the basis of this productive pattern, if we meet a new verb 'transduce' we know that there will be the form 'transduced'. Even if the pattern is not fully regular, there will be a form available, as in 'understand' ~ 'understood'. Surprisingly, this principle is sometimes violated, a phenomenon known as defectiveness, which means there is a gap in a word's set of forms: for example, given the verb 'forego', many if not most people are unwilling to produce a past tense. Although such gaps have been known to us since the days of Classical grammarians, they remain poorly understood. Defectiveness contradicts basic assumptions about the way inflectional rules operate, because it seems to require that speakers know that for certain words, not only should one not employ the expected rule, one should not employ any rule at all. This is a serious problem, since it is probably safe to say that all reigning models of grammar were designed as if defectiveness did not exist, and would lose a considerable amount of their elegance if it were properly factored in. This volume addressed these issues from a number of analytical approaches - historical, statistical and theoretical - and by using studies from a range of languages.

  • Baerman M, Corbett , Brown D, Hippisley AR. (2007) (Eds.) Deponency and morphological mismatches. Oxford University Press (Proceedings of the British Academy 145)
  • Chumakina M, Brown D, Quilliam H, Corbett GG. (2007) Slovar´ arčinskogo jazyka (arčinsko-russko-anglijskij) [A dictionary of Archi: Archi-Russian-English]. Makhachkala : Delovoj Mir, xxiv + 410 pp.
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1356/

    Abstract

    A Dictionary of the Archi (Daghestanian) Language including word sounds and illustrations.

    Archi is spoken by about 1200 people in a remote mountain region in Daghestan. The language is characterised by remarkable phonetics, a very high degree of irregularity in all its inflecting word classes and by its morphological system, with extremely large paradigms. Archi culture is one of the most distinctive and best-preserved cultures of Daghestan

  • Baerman M, Brown D, Corbett GG. (2005) The Syntax-Morphology Interface: a Study of Syncretism. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. xix + 281pp.
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1307/
  • Corbett GG, Brown D, Tiberius C. (2003) (Eds.) Agreement: A Typological Perspective. Special Issue of Transactions of the Philological Society 101 (2).. Oxford: Blackwell

Book chapters

  • Brown D. (2011) 'Morphological Typology. In: Jae Jung Song (ed.) The Handbook of Linguistic Typology, 487-503'. in Song JJ (ed.) Handbook of Linguistic Typology Oxford : Oxford University Press Article number 22 , pp. 487-503.
  • Krasovitsky A, Baerman M, Brown D, Corbett G, Williams P. (2010) 'Morphosyntactic Change in Russian: A Corpus-based Approach'. in Hansen B, Grković-Major J (eds.) Diachronic Slavic Syntax: gradual changes in focus München-Berlin-Wien : Verlag Otto Sagner 74, pp. 109-119.
  • Brown D, Tiberius C, Chumakina M, Corbett GG, Krasovitsky A. (2009) 'Databases designed for investigating specific phenomena.'. in Everaert M, Musgrave S, Dimitriadis A (eds.) The Use of Databases in Cross-Linguistic Studies Mouton De Gruyter 41, pp. 117-154.
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1335/

    Abstract

    This book promotes the development of linguistic databases by describing a number of successful database projects, focusing especially on cross-linguistic and ...

  • Brown D. (2005) 'Declension and Conjugation. In: D. A. Cruse, M. Job and P. L. Lutzeier (eds) Handbuch der Lexikologie.'. in D. Alan Cruse FH (ed.) Lexicology. An international handbook on the nature and structure of words and vocabularies, Volume 2, Berlin/New York : Mouton De Gruyter , pp. 1646-1655.
  • Baerman M, Brown D. (2005) 'Syncretism in Verbal Person/Number Marking. In: M. Haspelmath, M. Dryer, D. Gil and B. Comrie (eds.) World Atlas of Language Structures'. in Martin Haspelmath MSD (ed.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Oxford University Press , pp. 122-125.
  • Baerman M, Brown D. (2005) 'Case Syncretism. In: M. Haspelmath, M. Dryer, D. Gil and B. Comrie (eds.) World Atlas of Language Structures'. in Martin Haspelmath MSD (ed.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Oxford : Oxford University Press , pp. 118-121.
  • Corbett GG, Baerman M, Brown D. (2002) 'Domains of syncretism: a demonstration of the autonomy of morphology'. in Andronis M, Ball C, Elston H, Neuvel S (eds.) CLS 37: The Panels: 2001: Proceedings from the Parasessions of the 37th Meeting of the Chicago linguistics Society. Vol 37-2, 385-398 Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society
  • Corbett GG, Brown D, Evans N. (2002) 'Morphology, typology, computation. In: S. Bendjaballah, W.U. Dressler, O.E. Pfeiffer and M. Voeikova (eds) Morphology 2000, Selected papers from the 9th Morphology Meeting, Vienna, 24-25 February 2000'. in Bendjaballah S, Dressler U, Pfeiffer OE, Voeikova M (eds.) Morphology 2000: Selected Papers from the 9th Morphology Meeting, Vienna 24-28 February 2000 Amsterdam : Benjamins , pp. 91-104.
  • Baerman M, Brown D, Corbett GG. (2002) 'Case syncretism in and out of Indo-European.'. in Andronis M, Ball C, Elston H, Neuvel S (eds.) Papers from the 37th Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society Chicago : Chicago Linguistic Society 1, pp. 15-28.
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1062/
  • corbett , Baerman M, Brown D. (2001) 'Domains of syncretism: a demonstration of the autonomy of morphology. In: M. Andronis, C. Ball, H. Elston and S. Neuvel (eds.) CLS 37: The Panels. Papers from the 37th Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Vol. 2'. in Meeting CLS, Society CL (eds.) CLS 37: The Panels. Papers from the 37th Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Vol. 2 , pp. 385-398.
  • Evans N, Brown D, Corbett GG. (2001) 'Dalabon pronominal prefixes and the typology of syncretism: a Network Morphology analysis. In: G. Booij and J. van Marle (eds) Yearbook of Morphology 2000'. in Marle GBJV (ed.) Yearbook of Morphology 2000 Dordrecht : Kluwer , pp. 187-231.
  • Corbett GG, Hippisley A, Brown D, Marriott P. (2001) 'Frequency, regularity and the paradigm: a perspective from Russian on a complex relation. In: J. Bybee and P. Hopper (eds) Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure'. in Hopper JBAP (ed.) Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure Amsterdam : John Benjamins , pp. 201-226.
  • Corbett GG, Baerman M, Brown D. (2001) 'Case syncretism in and out of Indo-European.'. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society
  • Brown DP. (1998) 'Stem Indexing and Morphonological Selection in the Russian Verb.In: R. Fabri, A. Ortmann and T. Parodi (eds) Models of Inflection'. in Fabri R, Ortmann A, Parodi T (eds.) Models of Inflection Tübingen : Niemeyer , pp. 161-221.

Reports

  • Evans R, Tiberius C, Brown D, Corbett G. (2003) Russian Lemmatisation with DATR.

Internet publications

  • Chumakina M, Brown D, Corbett G, Quilliam H. (2011) Surrey Periphrasis Database [Available at: http://www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/Peri/].
  • Krasovitsky A, Baerman M, Brown D, Corbett GG, Long A, Quilliam H. (2009) Database of Short Term Morphosyntactic Change: variation in Russian 1801-200. [Available at: http://www.surrey.ac.uk/LIS/SMG/STMC/ ].
  • Baerman M, Corbett GG, Brown D. (2009) The Surrey Defectiveness Database (consisting of a Typological Database and a 100-language Survey) [Available at: http://www.defectiveness.surrey.ac.uk/ ].
  • Palmer W, Brown D, Corbett G, Quilliam H. (2008) Turning Owners into Actors. Possessive morphology as subject-indexing in the languages of the Bougainville region [Available at: http://www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/NWS/ ].
  • Chumakina M, Corbett GG, Brown D, Quilliam H. (2007) A Dictionary of the Languages of the Archi villages, south Daghestan [Available at: http://www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/archi/linguists/index.aspx ].
  • Baerman M, Corbett G, Brown D, Hippisley A. (2006) The Surrey Deponency databases [Available at: http://www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/Deponency/Deponency_home.htm ].
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1355/

    Abstract

    Cross-linguistic database and typological database

  • Corbett GG, Brown D, Chumakina M, Hippisley A. (2005) Resources for suppletion: A typological database and a bibliography..
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1077/

    Abstract

    On-line proceedings of the 4th Mediterranean Morphology Meeting (MMM4), Catania, Sicilia 21-23 Sep 2003

  • Chumakina M, Brown D, Corbett G, Hippisley A. (2004) Suppletion Database. [Available at: http://www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/Suppletion/index.aspx ].
  • Corbett GG, Brown D, Chumakina M, Hippisley A. (2004) The Surrey Suppletion database.
    Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1354/
  • Brown D, Corbett GG, Tiberius C, Barron J. (2002) The Surrey Database of Agreement. [Available at: www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/Agreement/index.aspx ].
  • Baerman M, Brown D, Corbett G. (2002) The Surrey Syncretisms Database. [ Available at: www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/Syncretism/index.aspx ].

Other publications

  • Chumakina M, Brown D, Corbett G, Quilliam H. (2008) Archi: A dictionary of the language of the Archi People, Daghestan, Caucasus, with sounds and pictures (reference edition, DVD for Windows).

Posters

  • Corbett GG, Baerman M, Brown D, Krasovitsky A, Long A. (2008) Animacy in the development of the Russian predicative adjective in the 19th and 20th centuries. 13th International Morphology Meeting, Vienna
  • Corbett GG, Baerman M, Brown D, Krasovitsky A, Long A. (2005) Diachronic processes in Russian morphosyntax (a corpus based approach). Corpora 2006, St Petersburg

Teaching

  • Global Diversity in Language and Communication (UG), module co-ordinator
  • Global Diversity in Language and Communication (PG), module co-ordinator

Research Grants

See the Surrey Morphology Group projects page.

External Activities

  • Committee member, United Kingdom Austronesian Research Group (current)
  • External Examiner for UG English Language and Linguistics Programmes, University of Manchester (2006-2010)
  • Treasurer Linguistics Assocation of Great Britain (2003-2006)
  • Member of ESRC Virtual College (2003-2006)
  • Member of ESRC PhD Board of Examiners (2005-2006)

Professional Associations

Dr Brown is member of the following societies:

  • Association for Linguistic Typology
  • British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies
  • Linguistics Association of Great Britain
  • Linguistic Society of America

PhD Students

  • Scott Collier (supervised with Prof. G. Corbett and Dr. M. Baerman)
  • Magdalena Fialkowska (supervised with Prof. G. Corbett)
  • Katarzyna Marchewka (supervised with Prof. G. Corbett)
  • Alison Long (supervised with Prof. G. Corbett and Dr. M. Baerman)
  • Claire Turner (supervised with Prof. G. Corbett)