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Research

Dr Marc Olivier is a linguist working primarily at the intersection of formal syntax and language change. His research focuses on word order issues in medieval Romance languages, mostly Old French and Old Occitan, as well as morphosyntax in modern Romance. In particular, Dr Olivier investigates issues relating to clitic placement, auxiliary selection, and clause size (i.e., restructuring) . He is currently working on a monograph entitled Clitic Placement in the History of French to be published with Oxford University Press in the Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics series.

In 2023, Dr Olivier was awarded a Seal of Excellence by the European Commission in recognition of the quality of his research. He is currently chercheur invité of the Maison Française d'Oxford, and a member of the CLESTHIA research team at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris.

Dr Olivier holds a MSc in Formal Linguistics and a PhD in Historical Syntax. Prior to working at the University of Oxford, he held teaching and research positions at Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University. Committed to fostering a nurturing and inclusive environment for linguists, Dr Olivier currently sits on the Executive Board of Societas Linguistica Europaea, which is the largest linguistics society in Europe. Previously, he sat on the Executive Committee of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain.

 

Teaching

Dr Olivier currently teaches a mix of tutorials, classes and lectures for the following:

Prelims:

  • General Linguistics
  • Semantics and Pragmatics

FHS:

  • Paper A - General Linguistics
  • Paper B2 - Syntax
  • Paper B6 - Historical Linguistics
  • Paper IV - History of French
  • Paper V - Modern French Linguistics

MSt/MPhil:

  • Paper B - Syntax
  • Paper D - History and Structure of French

Oxford Prospects Programmes:

  • Critical Thinking
  • Presentation Skills

Extra-curriculum:

  • Occitan Language and Linguistics (medieval & modern)

 

Publications

forthcoming. Olivier, Marc. Clitic Placement in the History of French. Book under contract with Oxford University Press (series: Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics).

in prep. Paradís, Anna and Marc Olivier. Restructuring in the Gallo-/Ibero-Romance continuum. Adam Ledgeway and Norma Schifano (eds.) Morphosyntactic variation and change under contact: case studies from Romance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

submitted. Olivier, Marc and Anna Paradís. A tripartition of complementizers: exploring clause size in Romance. Adina Dragomirescu and Alexandru Nicolae (eds.) Theoretical and Empirical issues in the study of clause size. Special issue of Revue Roumaine de Linguistique.

2025. Olivier, Marc.  A syntactic account of auxiliary selection in French. Probus. DOI: 10.1515/probus-2024-0005

2025. Olivier, Marc. Clitic placement with infinitives in the diachrony of French: from enclisis to proclisis.  Journal of Historical Syntax 9. DOI: 10.18148/hs/2025.v9i2-10.212

2024. Olivier, Marc, Sevdali, Christina, & Raffaella Folli. Infinitive fronting as a transparency effect in Old and Middle French. In New perspectives on the syntax of causative and restructuring verbs in Romance, eds. Jan Casalicchio & Peter Herbeck. Isogloss: Open Journal of Romance Linguistics. DOI: 10.5565/rev/isogloss.314

2023. Olivier, Marc, Sevdali, Christina, & Raffaella Folli. Clitic climbing and restructuring in the history of French. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 8(1). pp. 1–45. DOI: 10.16995/glossa.10135

2022. Olivier, Marc. Diachronie de la proclise et de l'enclise avec l'infinitif en français médiéval (12e-15e s.). In Le temps long: l'évoution du français dans un corpus textuel calibé. Le témoignage de la coutume de Normandie, ed. Mathieu Goux. Studia Linguistica Romanica 8, pp. 10-35. DOI: 10.25364 /19.2022.8.2  

2021. Olivier, Marc. Language in time: assessing Medieval French registers in a quest for accuracy in historical linguistics. French Studies Bulletin 42(159), pp.23-27. DOI: 10.1093/frebul/ktab012