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Background
I grew up in the small town of Wytheville, located in the beautiful Blue Ridge
mountains of southwestern Virginia.
After earning my B.A. at the College of William and Mary
(1993), I completed a Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of Chicago
(1999), under the direction of Salikoko S. Mufwene
(chair), Amy Dahlstrom,
James D. McCawley, and Jerrold M. Sadock. My first faculty position was in the Department
of English at the University of Hong Kong (1999-2002). Since 2003,
I have been a faculty member in the Department of English and the Linguistics Program here at Purdue
University, where I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in
syntax, semantics, English grammar, and introductory linguistics. I am a General Editor of the journal Language and Cognition. Research Interests and Goals
My research deals with
syntax and its interfaces with semantics, discourse information structure, and
language processing in production and comprehension. Some of my goals are: • to
identify the various factors that contribute to the realization of
grammatical alternations in language use • to
explore the hypothesis that processing pressures in production and
comprehension contribute to the development of grammatical conventions • to
investigate the nature of grammatical knowledge My students and I make
use of a variety of experimental and corpus-based methods here at Purdue,
where I direct the Experimental Linguistics Lab. For the latest updates on my research projects,
please follow me on ResearchGate.
Publications
Francis, Elaine J. To appear.
Structural priming can inform syntactic analyses of partially grammaticalized constructions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. (commentary
on Branigan and Pickering) [manuscript]
Francis,
Elaine J. and Laura A. Michaelis. 2017. When
relative clause extraposition is the right choice,
it’s easier. Language and
Cognition. 9(2): 332-370. [manuscript]
Hitz, John
and Elaine J. Francis. 2016. On the usefulness of
formal judgment tasks in syntax and in second-language research: The case of resumptive pronouns in English, Turkish, and Mandarin
Chinese. Linguistics 54: 1241-1280.
[manuscript]
Francis, Elaine J., Charles Lam,
Carol Chun Zheng, John Hitz, and Stephen Matthews.
2015. Resumptive pronouns, structural complexity, and the elusive distinction
between grammar and performance: evidence from Cantonese. Lingua 162: 56-81. [manuscript] [abstract and full text] Francis, Elaine J. 2015. Review of: Cross-linguistic variation and efficiency,
by John A. Hawkins. Language 91(1):
253-255. Francis, Elaine J. and Laura A.
Michaelis. 2014.Why move? How weight and discourse
factors combine to predict relative clause extraposition
in English. Edith Moravcsik, Andrej Malchukov,
and Brian MacWhinney. Eds. Competing Motivations in
Grammar and Usage, pp. 70-87. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [manuscript] Huber, Jessica E., Meghan
Darling, and Elaine J. Francis. 2012. Impact of typical aging and
Parkinson’s disease on the relationship among breath pausing, syntax,
and punctuation. American Journal of
Speech-Language Pathology 21: 368-379.
Francis, Elaine J. 2011. Constraining mismatch in
grammar and in sentence comprehension: The role of default correspondences. Pragmatics
and Autolexical Grammar: In Honor of Jerry Sadock, ed. by Etsuyo
Yuasa, Tista Bagchi, and
Katharine Beals, John Benjamins,
pp. 279-298. [manuscript] Francis, Elaine J., Stephen
Matthews, Reace Wing Yan Wong, and Stella Wing Man
Kwan. 2011. Effects of weight and syntactic priming on the production of
Cantonese verb-doubling. Journal of
Psycholinguistic Research 40: 1-28. [abstract and full text from Springer] Francis, Elaine J. 2010.
Grammatical weight and relative clause extraposition
in English. Cognitive Linguistics 21(1)
35-74. [abstract and full text from Mouton] Francis, Elaine J. and Etsuyo Yuasa. 2008. A
multi-modular approach to gradual change in grammaticalization. Journal
of Linguistics 44(1): 45-86. [abstract and full text from
Cambridge] Francis, Elaine J. 2007.
The role of default constructions in the processing of mismatch: the case of
possessive free relatives. Stefan Müller, ed. Proceedings of the 14th
International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar: Workshop on Constructions and
Grammatical Theory, 345-363. Stanford: CSLI Publications. [download article] [online conference proceedings]
Francis, Elaine J. and
Stephen Matthews. 2006. Categoriality and object extraction in Cantonese serial
verb constructions. Natural Language
and Linguistic Theory 24: 751-801. [abstract and full text from Springer] Francis, Elaine J. and Stephen Matthews. 2005. A multi-dimensional approach to the
category 'verb' in Cantonese. Journal
of Linguistics 41(2): 269-305. [abstract and full text from
Cambridge] Francis, Elaine J. 2005.
Syntactic mimicry as evidence for prototypes in grammar. In Salikoko S. Mufwene, Elaine J.
Francis, and Rebecca S. Wheeler, eds. Polymorphous Linguistics: Jim
McCawley’s Legacy, pp.161-181.
Cambridge: MIT Press. [abstract] Mufwene, Salikoko S., Elaine J.
Francis, and Rebecca S. Wheeler, eds. 2005. Polymorphous Linguistics: Jim
McCawley’s Legacy. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Francis, Elaine J. and
Laura A. Michaelis, eds. 2003. Mismatch: Form-Function Incongruity
and the Architecture of Grammar. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Francis, Elaine J. and
Laura A. Michaelis. 2003. Mismatch: a crucible for linguistic
theory. In Elaine J. Francis and Laura A. Michaelis,
eds. Mismatch: Form-Function Incongruity
and the Architecture of Grammar, pp. 1-27. Stanford: CSLI
Publications. Yuasa, Etsuyo and Elaine
J. Francis. 2003. Categorial mismatch in a
multi-modular theory of grammar. In Elaine J. Francis and Laura A. Michaelis, eds. Mismatch: Form-Function Incongruity
and the Architecture of Grammar, pp. 179-227. Stanford: CSLI
Publications. Francis, Elaine J. 2002.
Form and function in syntactic theory: a reaction to Newmeyer. Language Sciences 24(1): 29-56. [abstract and full text from ScienceDirect] Francis, Elaine J. 2000.
Two perspectives on the grammar of possession. Language Sciences.
22(1): 87-107. [abstract and full text from ScienceDirect] Francis, Elaine J. and
Laura A. Michaelis. 2000. Approaches to mismatch:
introduction. In Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King, eds. Proceedings of
the BFG00 Conference Workshops. Stanford: CSLI Publications. [online conference proceedings] Francis, Elaine J. 1999.
Variation within Lexical Categories. Chicago: University of Chicago
Ph.D. dissertation. [abstract] Francis, Elaine J. 1999.
A conceptual semantic analysis of thematic structure in predicate
nominals. Paper presented at
Texas Linguistics Society, Austin, Texas, 1999. (submitted and accepted for
publication in Texas Linguistic Forum, but the volume has not yet appeared) [abstract] [download paper] Francis, Elaine J. 1998.
Some semantic reasons why iconicity between lexical categories and their
discourse functions isn't perfect. Language Sciences 20(4): 399-414. [abstract] [full text from ScienceDirect] Francis, Elaine J. 1998.
When form and meaning come apart: quantificational nouns, predicate nominals,
and locative subjects in English Chicago Linguistic Society 34(1):
159-170. [abstract] [vol. 34 from CLS] Jones, Elaine and Gail Brendel Viechnicki. 1997.
Special issue on the importance of theory in discourse analysis. Language
& Communication 17(2): 71-74. Jones, Elaine and Gail Brendel Viechnicki, eds. 1997.
The importance of theory in discourse analysis. Special issue of Language
& Communication 17(2). Francis, Alexander L.
and Elaine Jones. 1996. Phonetics and phonological theory. Language &
Communication 16(4): 381-395. Courses at Purdue
Purdue Linguistics Links
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