Publications

Sluckin, Benjamin L. & Eric Fuß. 2026. (Not) anything goes: The syntax and diachrony of the German gehen-middle. Journal of Historical Syntax 10(5). 1-79. DOI (open access)

Sluckin, Benjamin L. 2025. Revisiting the syntax and development of Kiezdeutsch V3: A new perspective. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 37(1). 1-61. DOI (open access)

Sluckin, Benjamin L. 2024. The covert perceiver in English locative inversion: An alternative to expletive pro. Evolutionary Linguistic Theory 6(1-2). 192-243. DOI (open access)    PDF

Fuß, Eric & Benjamin L. Sluckin. 2024. The evolution of expletives. Evolutionary Linguistic Theory 6(1-2). 1-26. DOI (open access)

Sluckin, Benjamin L. Under review. (Everyone) everywhere all at once: A relational account of quantified impersonal -where in English. Manuscript under minor revision in the second review round at Glossa. Preprint

Sluckin, Benjamin L. & Itamar Kastner. Resubmitted after second-round revisions. Everywhere here can say this: The English locative impersonal. Manuscript in the third review round at English Language and Linguistics. Preprint

Sluckin, Benjamin L. & Oliver Bunk. 2023. Non-canonical V3 and resumption in Kiezdeutsch. In Karen de Clercq et al. (eds.), Adverbial Resumption in Verb Second Languages, 327-354. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI    PDF

Sluckin, Benjamin L., Silvio Cruschina & Fabienne Martin. 2021. Locative inversion in Germanic and Romance: A conspiracy theory. In Sam Wolfe & Christine M. Salvesen (eds.), Continuity and Variation in Germanic and Romance, 165-194. Oxford: Oxford University Press. OUP link    Preprint

with Eric Fuß, ‘Go’ as a modal raising verb: The emergence of an infinitival medio-passive in German @ Diachronic Generative Syntax (DiGS 26), University of Oxford.

Deontic (causative) passives in Italian: from no agency to double agents (invited) @ Workshop Sentence Grammar / Discourse Grammar, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.

‘go’ + zu-infinitive: an unaccusative (medio-)passivization strategy and its limitations (invited) @ Workshop The Interplay between Event Structure and Argument Realization, Universität zu Köln.

A bleeding theory of V3 in strict(er) V2 systems: subjects, frame setters, and dislocation (invited) @ Workshop Complex Prefields in V2 Languages, Bergische Universität Wuppertal.

Deconstructing Subject of Predication and the dative problem: a portmanteau analysis (invited) @ Sprachwissenschaftliches Kolloquium, Institut für Romanistik, Universität Hamburg.

Synchronic and diachronic perspectives on the so-called modal gehen-passive in German (online talk) @ ZAS, Berlin.

Das geht nicht zu ändern: the origin and structure of the German modal gehen-passive @ AG 7 Economy, routine and creativity in syntactic change, 45. DGfS-Jahrestagung, Köln.

Locative Inversion in the history of English: a spoonful of innovation and a pinch of continuity @ The Theory and Historical Development of Expletives (and non-referential arguments) workshop, University of Bochum.

with Itamar Kastner, Everywhere in the UK quantifies over individuals: a new locative impersonal subject @ Syntactic Change in Progress workshop at DiGS 22, University of Konstanz.

with Itamar Kastner, A locative human impersonal subject: Metonymy-driven change at the interfaces @ Language Change: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem.

with Itamar Kastner, Everywhere we checked talks like this @ University of Glasgow.

with Itamar Kastner, Everywhere in the world quantifies over individuals @ Paper Brown Bag, NYU, New York.

Locative Inversion is a conspiracy: a formal typology @ Sentence Grammar/Discourse Grammar IV, University of Oslo, Norway.

Some methodological and theoretical concerns when dealing with a "residual" V2 pattern @ Secrets of Success. Or: How to preserve a Verb Second word order? University of Oslo, Norway.

Revisiting V3 in Kiezdeutsch: a preverbal subject constraint across different types of V3 @ DiGS, 2018 in York.

Information Structure Change in an Emerging Grammar : V1 and V3 in Kiezdeutsch, Colloque Information Structure and Language Change, Normandie Université, Université de Caen Normandie, France.

Single Specifiers and Phasehood in the Voice/vP domain and beyond: problems for SOV V2, presented at ' PhD Workshop', Leibniz-ZAS, Berlin, Germany.

V2, non-V2, and resumption: A comparison of American Norwegian and Kiezdeutsch, with Artemis Alexiadou and Terje Lohndal, @ V3 and Resumptive Adverbials, University of Ghent, Belgium.

Verb third in Kiezdeutsch: The development of an (optional) subject position?, presented at 'Manchester Forum in Linguistics', University of Manchester, UK.

*Locatives, V2, and Subject Positions: FinP as a Gatekeeper in the History of English, Presented at 'DAAD-University of Cambridge Research Hub for German Studies: Research network 'Morphosyntactic change through corpora in German and beyond, Workshop 2: Complementizers and the left periphery', University of Cambridge, UK.

Feature Economy and Grammar Competition in language and dialect contact, presented at ‘Language Contact from an I Language Perspective’, IKER(Center for the Study of the Basque Language and its Texts), San Sebastian-Donostia.

Understanding exaptation from an acquisitionist parametric perspective, presented at Linguistik Meetup Berlin-Potsdam, FU-Berlin.

The exaptive reanalysis of V2 as locative inversion in the history of English: an emergentist parametric approach, presented at SUM-UP 2016, Summer School on Word order variation and change. Diachronic insights into Germanic diversity”, Potsdam.

Cross-linguistic influence in the word order of heritage speakers: thoughts on the syntax-discourse interface. University of Cambridge.

Non-canonical subjects and subject positions: locative inversion, V2-violations, and feature inheritance. PhD Thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Artemis Alexiadou (1), Prof. Dr. Eric Fuß (2), Prof. David Willis (3)

Exaptation across grammatical domains: a generative account of source contexts, mechanisms and outcomes. MPhil thesis, University of Cambridge, Supervisor: Dr David Willis

Zurück in die Zukunft: a socio-historical linguistic account of the development of the future tense in German. BA dissertation, University of Manchester

Language Contact as an Accelerator of Change: The Diffusion of the werden Future Tense Periphrasis in German (Updated version of BA thesis)