Rebecca Shields
Position title: Instructional Administrator
Email: rashields@wisc.edu
Address:
1166 Van Hise Hall

Language Sciences
Education
Ph.D. Linguistics, UW-Madison, 2009
M.A. Russian Philology, Moscow State University, 1999
B.A. Russian, Macalester College, 1996
Research Statement
My research focuses on theoretical syntax and the syntax-semantics interface. I am interested in the syntactic expression of semantically-defined categories such as modals, aspectual markers, adverbials, definites/specifics, and wh-questions. Much of my research has focused on the interaction of syntactic locality constraints (Relativized Minimality, Intervention Effects, and Weak Crossover) on various types of semantically motivated movement (including wh-movement, scrambling, and topicalization). My main languages of research have been English and Russian, but I have also written about other languages including Menominee and Japanese. An ongoing project is a cross-linguistic investigation of the syntax of Discourse-Linked (specific) nominals.
I am also interested in Irish Gaelic (Gaeilge), and teach and facilitate Irish language classes at UW-Madison, with the community group Ciorcal Comhrá na Cuinge (The Isthmus Conversation Circle), and at the annual Tionól Gaeilge (Irish Language Gathering) at the UW-Milwaukee Center for Celtic Studies.
Administrative Roles
As Instructional Administrator, I serve as our unit’s Undergraduate Advisor, Graduate Program Coordinator, Curricular and Enrollment Representative, and Website and Communications manager.
Teaching
Ling 101: Human Language
Anthro/Ling 301: Introduction to Linguistics
Ling 330: Syntax
Ling 340: Semantics
Beginning Irish Gaelic 1 & 2 (offered as an independent study)
Selected Publications
2012. Scrambling and the feature-based approach to Minimality. Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 19: The Maryland Meeting. Michigan Slavic Publications, pp. 85-98.
2012. (with Yafei Li and Vivian Lin) Adverb Classes and the Nature of Minimality. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 30:1, 217-260.
2009. Intervention and Rescue: Arguments for Representational Constraints on Syntactic Dependencies. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
2008. The Functional Hierarchy in Menominee: Preverbs and Adverbs. CLS 41: The Main Session, Rodney L. Edwards, et al., eds., 431-444. Chicago: The Chicago Linguistic Society.
2006. Modal Repair. NELS 35: Proceedings of the 35th annual meeting of the North East Linguistic Society. Leah Bateman and Cherlon Ussery, eds. Amherst, Mass.: GLSA.
2005. Menominee Preverbs as Functional Categories. Papers of the 36th Algonquian Conference.
2004. Word Order and Discourse in Menominee. Papers of the 35th Algonquian Conference, H. C. Wolfart, ed, 373-388. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba.