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Paul Hirschbühler

Full Professor, Department of Linguistics

Member of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies and thereby authorized to supervise theses.

Office: ARTS 424
Telephone: 613-562-5800, ext. 1755
E-mail: phirsch@uOttawa.ca
Website: http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~hirsch/

I have been teaching in Ottawa since 1978. Most of my publications deal with syntax, especially of French (synchrony & diachrony). I have always had a strong interest for semantic issues dealing with quantification or the syntax-semantics interface in the area of verb valency, in particular as it concerns verb argument structure flexibility.

I am a collaborator in an historical linguistics project, Modelling Change: the paths of French, directed by France Martineau and I study, in a comparative perspective, the various modalities of syntactic realization and the semantic characteristics of the locative alternation.

University degrees

1978 – PhD Linguistics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
1970 – MA, Philosophie et Lettres, Philologie Romane, Université Libre de Bruxelles

Fields of interest

• The semantic base and the morpho-syntactic modalities of the constructional flexibility of verbs
• The (diachronic) syntax of French
• Cooking for oneself and one’s friends

Ongoing research

• Locative alternation and event structure: an interlinguistic and diachronic perspective.
• The left periphery and the Tobler-Mussafia law in the history of French.
• Coquilles Saint-Jacques from A to Z

Courses taught

• LIN2710 Introduction à la syntaxe
• LIN3710 Théorie syntaxique
• LIN5917 Semantics I
• LIN6918 Semantics II
• LIN5917 Syntax I
• LIN6918 Syntax II
• LIN5919 Historical Linguistics

Graduate seminars on syntax-semantics interface and undergraduate course in syntax.

Selected publications

Hirschbühler, P. & M. Labelle (2006) Enclisis and proclisis of object pronouns at the turn of the 17th century in the speech of the future Louis XIIIth. In D. Arteaga & R. Gess, eds. Historical Romance Linguistics: Retrospective and Perspectives. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 187-207.

Hirschbühler, P. (2005) L’alternance locative: remarques sur quelques différences interlinguistiques. In F. Lambert et H. Nølke, eds. La syntaxe au coeur de la grammaire. Presses Universitaire de Rennes, collection “Rivages linguistiques”, 137-146.

Labelle, M. & P. Hirschbühler (2005) Changes in clausal organization and the position of clitics in Old French. In M. Batllori, M-L. Hernanz, C. Picallo & F. Roca, eds.Grammaticalization and Parametric Change. 60-71. Oxford:  Oxford Universy Press, 60-71.

Labelle, M. & P. Hirschbühler (2001) La position des clitiques par rapport au verbe à l’impératif dans l’évolution du français. Recherches Linguistiques 30 : 13-38.

Hirschbühler, P. & M. Labelle (1995) Changes in Verb Position in French Negative Infinitival Clauses. Language Variation and Change 6: 149-178.

Hirschbühler, P. (1995) Null Subjects in V1 Embedded Clauses in Philippe de Vigneulles’ Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. In A. Battye & I. Roberts, eds. Clause Structure and Language Change. Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 257-291.

Hirschbühler, P. & M. Labelle (1993) Le statut de (ne) pas  en français contemporain. Recherches Linguistiques  22 : 31-58.

Hirschbühler, P. & D. Bouchard (1985) French "Quoi" and its clitic allomorph "que". In C. Neidle & R.A. Nuñez, eds. Studies in the Romance Languages. Dordrecht : Foris, 39-60.

Hirschbühler, P. & M.-L. Rivero (1983) Remarks on free relatives and matching phenomena. Linguistic Inquiry 14: 505-519.

Hirschbühler, P. (1982) VP deletion and across-the-board quantifier scope». In J. Pustejovsky & P. Sells, eds. Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the North Eastern Linguistic Society. Amherst, MA: GLSA, 132-139.

Hirschbühler, P. (1981) The ambiguity of iterated multiple questions. Linguistic Inquiry 12: 135-146.

Hirschbühler, P. & M.-L. Rivero (1981) Catalan restrictive relatives: core and periphery. Language 57: 591-625.

Hirschbühler, P. (1980) The French interrogative pronoun "que". In W. Cressey & D.J. Napoli, eds. Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages 9. Washington : Georgetown University Press, 227-247.

Hirschbühler, P. (1980) La syntaxe des relatives indépendantes. In M. Dominicy & M. Wilmet, eds. Linguistique romane et linguistique française. Hommages à Jacques Pohl. Edit. de l'Université de Bruxelles, 113-130.

Hirschbühler, P. (1976) Two analyses of free relatives in French. Papers from the Sixth Annual Meeting of the North Eastern Linguistic Society, Montréal, 137-152. Also in Le Langage et l’Homme 31 :71-81.

Hirschbühler, P. (1975) On the source of Lefthand NPs in French. Linguistic Inquiry 6: 155-165.

Hirschbühler, P. (1971) Contribution à une étude transformationnelle de l'interrogation en français. Le Langage et l'Homme 16 : 28-35.

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