Dr Oliver Bond
Academic and research departments
School of Literature and Languages, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.About
Biography
I am a Reader in Linguistics (Associate Professor) in Surrey Morphology Group (SMG), a research centre based in the School of Literature & Languages at the University of Surrey.
My research examines the systemic properties of language through an exploration of the diverse solutions that have evolved to meet similar communicative goals.
In particular, it explores the syntactic and information-structural evidence for the ways that speakers monitor, encode and interpret reference to discourse participants using agreement and/or case marking in different linguistic systems,
Areas of specialism
University roles and responsibilities
- Linguistics Pathway Lead for the ESRC South East Network for Social Sciences (SeNSS) Doctoral Training Partnership
- PhD Coordinator for Surrey Morphology Group
My qualifications
Affiliations and memberships
ResearchResearch interests
My research covers a wide range of topics related to understanding linguistic diversity and the preservation and description of languages.
My major research interests lie in:
- Typology
- Morphology
- Syntax (especially Lexical Functional Grammar)
- Information structure
- Language documentation and description
- Niger-Congo languages (especially Eleme and other Benue-Congo languages)
- Nilo-Saharan languages (especially Nuer and other Nilotic languages)
- Tibeto-Burman languages (especially the languages of Manang District, Nepal)
- Indo-Aryan languages (especially Maithili)
Although I work with data from a variety of languages, my background is in Africanist linguistics. Much of my early work describes typologically unusual aspects of the morphosyntax of Eleme (Ogonoid, Benue-Congo), an under-described Niger-Congo language spoken in southeast Nigeria.
In 2012, my main fieldwork focus moved to Nepal, where I was working on four Tibeto-Burman languages - Manang Gurung, Manange, Nar-Phu and Gyalsumdo - which are spoken in the villages of Manang District. This fieldwork was conducted in collaboration with Kristine Hildebrandt (SIUE), Dubi Nanda Dhakal (Tribhuvan University) and other members of the Manang Languages Project.
Since 2015, I have been working on the West Nilotic language Nuer, spoken in South Sudan and Ethiopia. This work has been carried out in collaboration with Matthew Baerman (Surrey), Tatiana Reid (Edinburgh) and Irina Monich (Princeton).
Research projects
Analogy is where speakers notice patterns in their language and extend them to new environments. In this project, I am collaborating with Helen Sims-Williams and Matthew Baerman in SMG in the production of a predictive model of analogy.
The AHRC-funded Nuer Literacy Initiative is an international collaboration between researchers at the Universities of Surrey and Edinbugh (Oliver Bond, Matthew Baerman and Tatiana Reid), educational facilitators at Saide - the South African Institute for Distance Education, and a network of Nuer language activists in East Africa and beyond.
All current approaches to syntax define agreement as a local syntactic relation, i.e. occurring within a clear syntactic domain. 'External Agreement' defies constraints on locality. For this AHRC-funded project I am working with Surrey colleagues Marina Chumakina and Steven Kaye to explore the extent of non-local agreement in four languages of Daghestan. As part of the AHRC-funded project 'Loss of inflection' I am working alongside Matthew Baerman, Greville G. Corbett and Helen Sims-Williams in SMG to investigate regularities in the way that inflectional systems are lost over time, using case studies from languages spoken across the world. Prominent possessors are possessors that can control agreement or switch reference. As part of the AHRC-funded project 'Prominent possessors', I am working with Irina Nikolaeva and András Bárány at SOAS, and Greville G. Corbett in SMG, to determine which factors are important when possessors that are internal to an argument noun phrase take on an unexpectedly prominent role in syntax. Nuer is a Western Nilotic (Nilo-Saharan) language spoken primarily in South Sudan. As part of the AHRC funded project 'Morphological complexity in Nuer' I am working with Matthew Baerman, Irina Monich and Tatiana Reid in SMG and Bert Remijsen from the University of Edinburgh to investigate the complex system of morphology in this widely spoken but under-described language.
This AHRC funded project examined the 'extreme' agreement system in Archi (Nakh-Daghestanian) from the perspective of three different mainstream syntactic theories. The project involved working alongside Greville G. Corbett and Marina Chumakina from SMG and Dunstan Brown at the University of York. Optional ergative case-marking (May 2013 - April 2015) For the British Academy funded project 'Optional ergative case-marking: What can be expressed by its absence?' I examined the factors motivating the presence of ergative case marking in the languages of Manang District, Nepal. A journal article on the origins of differential ergative case marking in Tamangic languages is currently in preparation.
Research interests
My research covers a wide range of topics related to understanding linguistic diversity and the preservation and description of languages.
My major research interests lie in:
- Typology
- Morphology
- Syntax (especially Lexical Functional Grammar)
- Information structure
- Language documentation and description
- Niger-Congo languages (especially Eleme and other Benue-Congo languages)
- Nilo-Saharan languages (especially Nuer and other Nilotic languages)
- Tibeto-Burman languages (especially the languages of Manang District, Nepal)
- Indo-Aryan languages (especially Maithili)
Although I work with data from a variety of languages, my background is in Africanist linguistics. Much of my early work describes typologically unusual aspects of the morphosyntax of Eleme (Ogonoid, Benue-Congo), an under-described Niger-Congo language spoken in southeast Nigeria.
In 2012, my main fieldwork focus moved to Nepal, where I was working on four Tibeto-Burman languages - Manang Gurung, Manange, Nar-Phu and Gyalsumdo - which are spoken in the villages of Manang District. This fieldwork was conducted in collaboration with Kristine Hildebrandt (SIUE), Dubi Nanda Dhakal (Tribhuvan University) and other members of the Manang Languages Project.
Since 2015, I have been working on the West Nilotic language Nuer, spoken in South Sudan and Ethiopia. This work has been carried out in collaboration with Matthew Baerman (Surrey), Tatiana Reid (Edinburgh) and Irina Monich (Princeton).
Research projects
Analogy is where speakers notice patterns in their language and extend them to new environments. In this project, I am collaborating with Helen Sims-Williams and Matthew Baerman in SMG in the production of a predictive model of analogy.
The AHRC-funded Nuer Literacy Initiative is an international collaboration between researchers at the Universities of Surrey and Edinbugh (Oliver Bond, Matthew Baerman and Tatiana Reid), educational facilitators at Saide - the South African Institute for Distance Education, and a network of Nuer language activists in East Africa and beyond.
Supervision
Postgraduate research supervision
I am happy to supervise students working on topics in morphology, syntax, information structure, especially typological approaches to any of these topics. I am also open to supervising students who wish to work on the documentation of underdescribed languages, especially from Africa and Trans-Himalayan region.
I am currently co-supervisor for one student based in Surrey Morphology Group:
- Jurriaan Wiegertjes, who is researching the historical development of gender and classifier systems in Amazonia.
My former PhD students are:
- Dr Dávid Győrfi, who researched auxiliary constructions in Modern Spoken Kazakh.
- Dr Borja Herce, who conducted the first typological study into morphomes.
- Dr Tatiana Reid, who research the complex phonological and morphological properties of verbs in Nuer, a West Nilotic languages form South Sudan and Ethiopia.
Teaching
I am the convenor for the following UG and PG modules:
Introduction to Sociolinguistics (LIN2005)
Research Skills for Business and Marketing Professionals (CMCM064)