I am a Romanian born New Zealander, currently working at the University of Reading, in Mark Pagel's evolutionary biology and applied statistics lab. Previously, I have worked at the University of Auckland, mostly in the Department of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics, but also in the Department of Psychology, for the Austronesian Database Language project, under the guidance of Prof. Russell Gray, and the Centre for Pacific Studies, on the grammar and dictionary project for Takuu language, under the guidance of Prof. Richard Moyle.
With Anna at our graduation, Auckland Town Hall	I BELONG TO ...         ° The New Zealand Linguistics Society         ° The Australian Linguistics Society         ° The Linguistics Association of Great Britain               ° The International Society for the Linguistics of English SERVICES TO THE COMMUNITY ... ° Member of the Editorial Board of  the International  Journal of Linguistics. ° Volunteer marker for the UK Linguistics Olympiad (2011). ° I have refereed papers for Constructional Approaches to Languages volume, Folia Linguistica, Complexity, and International Journal of Linguistics.   °STEM Ambassador. Outreach in the community under STEM in the Berkshire area. ° Forum Panel Writter for Language and Linguistics Compass - here is a link. ° Linguistics Seminar Series organiser (2004-2008), University of Auckland DALSL. I SPEAK ... ° First/Native: Romanian, English ° Second/Fluent: German (schooled in Germany), French ° Beginners: Italian, Maori SCIENCE COMMUNICATION TRAINING ... ° Royal Society Media Training Course, Feb 2011, Royal Society House, London ° Royal Society Communication Course, March 2011, Royal Society House, London
MY DOCTORATE... My Doctoral Thesis at the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand concerns the organisation of syntax in unplanned, spoken New Zealand English. In particular, the notion of subordination; was investigated by exploring a corpus of spoken NZ English, compiled by the linguistics research group from the University of Victoria, in Wellington. One family of constructions which involves the phenomenon of subordination is that of clefts. The thesis investigated demonstrative clefts, with respect to their syntactic and discourse related properties, but also it-clefts and wh-clefts. Aside from contributions to existing knowledge regarding the organisation of grammar in spoken discourse, it is hoped that this work will also make a contribution to existing theories of (first) language acquisition and to current methods of language teaching. You can find a short abstract here (HTML page). My work was done under the guidance of Prof. Emeritus J. Miller and Assoc. Prof. F. Lichtenberk.

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