I am interesting in agreement patterns in Welsh, in particular agreement clitics on nonfinite verbs in various so-called 'periphrastic' constructions. More broadly I am interested in feature-theory in syntax (under Minimalism) and morphology (under Distributed Morphology), and aim to investigate variation in agreement patterns cross-linguistically, especially in the Celtic language family.
I completed my first Generals Paper in the PhD program at the University of Toronto on deriving asymmetries in the distribution of agreement clitics on Welsh verbal-nouns.
2025. On the syntax of low clitic agreement in Welsh. Generals Paper. University of Toronto. 58 ms pages. PDF.
2025. (Non)agreement in Welsh. 43rd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Poster. University of Washington. April 26. Poster; Handout. Draft proceedings paper (submitted; ms).
2025. Intervention and extraction in Welsh agreement asymmetries. 29th Welsh Linguistics Seminar. Talk. Bangor University. July 4. Handout.
2024. When and How to Agree: Insights from Middle and Modern Welsh. 43rd Harvard Celtic Colloquium. Harvard University. October 11. Slides.
2024. Agreement with nominal antecedents in Welsh. Canadian Linguistic Association Conference 2024. Carleton University. June 18.
Dec 5, 2023 - March 31, 2024. Department of Linguistics SSHRC Institutional Grant (SIG). $250. Elicitation on Welsh Agreement Clitics. University of Toronto.
April 1, 2024 - March 31, 2024. Department of Linguistics SSHRC Institutional Grant (SIG). $150. Elicitation on Agreement and verbal nouns in Welsh. University of Toronto.
From 2024 to 2026 I worked as a Research Assistant on the Syntax of Nominal Linkers project (PI: Arsalan Kahnemuipour), looking at the distribution and character of pre-adjectival and pre-genitival 'articles' in Albanian, which have previously been compared to the ezafe linker in Iranian languages.
I will be presenting our work this summer at the Canadian Linguistics Association in Calgary.
Quick, Calvin and Arsalan Kahnemuyipour. upcoming. An investigation of nominal linkers in Albanian. Canadian Linguistics Association 2026. Talk. University of Calgary. June 19, 2026.
My undergraduate honors thesis at UC Berkeley looked at the interaction between verse constraints and syntactic well-formedness in medieval Welsh poetry. Specifically, I worked with a set of nine cywydd poems by the renowned 14th century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym to show that the use of linguistically marked constructions—like inverted attributive adjective constructions and dropped preverbal particles—are motivated by constraints on verse form: alliterative requirements, rhyme, and meter. Following Fitzgerland (2007) and Youmans (2009), I developed an Optimality Theoretic analysis of the interaction between verse and syntactic constraints in Dafydd's poetry.
Going forward, I will expand this work to dropped prepositions and other deviations from standard linguistic production in cywyddau by Dafydd and other late medieval Welsh poets. In particular, I am interested in examining the aspects of semantic compositionality that are affected by so-called 'poetic license' in addition to those of syntactic well-formedness.
Key references
Youmans, Gilbert. 2009. For all this werlde ryche: syntactic inversions as evidence for metrical principles in the alliterative Morte Arthure. Approaches to the Metres of Alliterative Verse. Leeds Texts and Monographs, New Series 7: 115-133.
Fitzgerland, Colleen. 2007. An optimality treatment of syntactic inversions in English verse. Language Sciences 29(2-3): 203-217.
2025. Towards a Refined Parameterization of Poetic FIT: Evidence from Dafydd ap Gwilym. Proceedings paper. In Proceedings of the Association of Celtic Students, vol. 11, ed. Freya Smith and Rebecca Madlener, 60-73. Association of Celtic Students. PDF.
2024. Constraints on verse form and syntactic well-formedness in the cywyddau of Dafydd ap Gwilym. Language and Literature 33(3): 199-220. DOI: 10.1177/09639470241273555
2023. (Post-)Syntactic Variation in Early Modern Welsh Poetry: An Optimality Theoretic Approach. Manuscript.
2024. Towards a formal linguistic approach to control in poetry. Poetics and Linguistics Association Conference 2024. Sheffield Hallam University. June 26. Schedule.
2024. Towards a refined parameterization of poetic “fit:” a case study in Welsh verse forms. Celtic Students Conference 2024. Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest. May 31. Schedule.
2024. Linguistic approaches to poetic data: a case study in Dafydd ap Gwilym’s cywyddau. Annual Meeting of the Celtic Studies Association of North America 2024. Fairleigh Dickinson University. April 5. Schedule.
2023. Verse constraints and syntactic well-formedness in medieval Welsh poetry. 15th LGCU Welcome Workshop. University of Toronto. October 20.
2023. Syntactic variation in Early Modern Welsh poetry: an optimality theoretic approach. Linguistics Undergraduate Honors Colloquium 2023. University of California, Berkeley. May 1.