Ken Ramshøj Christensen

Associate professor, PhD.

Department of Aesthetics and Communication (DAC)
Section for English, Aarhus University
Jens Chr. Skous Vej 2, DK-8000 Aarhus C

Email: KenRC@hum.au.dk
Office: Building 1485, Room 323
Phone: (+45) 8716 2567

&

Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience (CFIN)
Aarhus University Hospital, Building 10G, Nørrebrogade 44, DK-8000 Aarhus

Research: Research interests ... Curriculum Vitae

Download: Papers Handouts Teaching

See also my other webpages: [Site 1] and [Site 2]

Research interests include:

Negation (sentential negation, negative quantifiers, NEG-shift).

Comparative Syntax (primarily, but not only) of the Scandinavian Languages (Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish), English, and German.

Syntactic Theory (phases, interfaces, displacement)

Structure dependence (structural ambiguity, garden-path sentences, numerical processing)

Linguistic Theory and Science (minimalism, optimality theory, computation, abstract elements)

Language processing (language comprehension, competence vs. performance)

Experimental syntax (behavioral eksperiments on syntactic processing)

Language and the Brain (neurolinguistics, patholinguistics, aphasia, neuro-imaging, fMRI).
Click here to view an animated MR scanning of my own brain. [1.8 MB gif]

Click here to view an newer, better, and smoother version. [5.5 MB gif]

Language and Mind (processing, cognition, psycholinguistics).

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Curriculum Vitae:

2001:	MA (Diss. title: *Language Impairment, Neurology and Linguistic Theory*), Dept. of Linguistics, University of Aarhus.
	[See the Papers section]

2005:	PhD (Diss. title: *Interfaces: Negation - Syntax - Brain*), Dept. of Language, Literature, and Culture, Aarhus University.
	[See the Papers section]

2006:	Awarded a PhD prize for "promising, young researchers" from Aarhus University Research Fund (AUFF).
	[More info (in Danish) in the press release and in Campus (page 6)]

2007:	Post doc (Project title: *The Bones of Cognition*), CFIN & Department of Language, Literature, and Culture, Aarhus University.
	[Project description]

2010:	Associate professor.
	Department of Language, Literature, and Culture, Aarhus University.

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Papers:

Unpublished:

Christensen, Ken Ramshøj (2005) Interfaces: Negation - Syntax - Brain. PhD dissertation, Aarhus University, Denmark.
[Kort dansk resumé] [Printer-friendly 2up version]

Christensen, Ken Ramshøj (2001) Language Impairment, Neurology and Linguistic Theory. MA thesis, Aarhus University, 2001.
[Dansk resumé]

(See also my handouts and conference papers)

Published:

Christensen, Ken Ramshøj, & Wallentin, Mikkel (2011) The locative alternation: Distinguishing linguistic processing cost from error signals in Broca's region. NeuroImage, 56.3, 1622-1631.

Christensen, Ken Ramshøj (2011) Flere folk har været i Paris end jeg har. In Hansen, Inger Schoonderbeek, & Peter Widell (eds.) 13. Møde om Udforskningen af Dansk Sprog (MUDS), Nordic Department, Aarhus University.

Christensen, Ken Ramshøj (2010) Syntactic reconstruction and reanalysis, semantic dead ends, and prefrontal cortex. Brain and Cognition, 73.1, 41-50.

Christensen, Ken Ramshøj (2009) Hjernebark og syntaktiske træer. In Christensen, K.R. (ed.), Tidsskrift for Sprogforskning 7. (Special issue on Language and Cognition).

Christensen, Ken Ramshøj (2009) Forord til Cognition/Kognition. In Christensen, K.R. (ed.), Tidsskrift for Sprogforskning 7. (Special issue on Language and Cognition).

Christensen, K.R., Vikner, S. (2009) Sprog og evolution. In Kjærgaard, Per C. (ed.), evolution.dk.

Christensen, Ken Ramshøj (2009) Negative and affirmative sentences increase activation in different areas in the Brain. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 22, 1-17.

Christensen, Ken Ramshøj (2008) NEG-shift, Licensing, and Repair Strategies. Studia Linguistica, 62.2, 182-223.

Christensen, Ken Ramshøj (2008) Interfaces, syntactic movement, and neural activation: A new perspective on the implementation of language in the brain. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 21.2, 73-103.

Christensen, Ken Ramshøj (2007) The Infinitive Marker across Scandinavian. NordLyd, 34, 147-165.

Christensen, Ken Ramshøj (2005) Sætningsnegation og negative objekter. Et korpusstudie., in Widell, Peter & Mette Kunøe (eds.) 10. Møde om Udforskningen af Dansk Sprog (MUDS), Nordic Department, Aarhus University.

Christensen, Ken Ramshøj (2003) On the Synchronic and Diachronic Status of the Negative Adverbial ikke/not. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax (WPSS), 72, 1-53.

Christensen, Ken Ramshøj (2003) Review: Poole, Geoffrey (2002) Syntactic Theory, New York: Palgrave. English Studies.

Christensen, Ken Ramshøj (2001) The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain: A Review of Two Contrastive Views (Pinker & Deacon). Grazer Linguistische Studien (GLS) 55, 1-20.

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Handouts:

Here are some of my old handouts and conference papers.

Syntax and the brain:A new perspective on the role of Broca’s area in syntactic processing.
The 22nd Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, Aalborg University, Denmark, June 20, 2006.

Object positions in the brain.
Ph.D. course & workshop on Object Positions and Clause Structure The Sandbjerg Estate, Denmark, June 15, 2006

Modularity and Language.
CCC workshop, Modularity in Language, Brain and Mind, Aarhus, Denmark, April 7, 2006.

Mapping Discourse Functions onto Syntactic Domains.
Workshop on Discourse and Linguistic Form. Center for Linguistics, University of Aalborg, Denmark, September 29-30, 2005.

The infinitival marker across Scandinavian.
Workshop for PhD students and young researchers
Grand Meeting for Scandinavian Dialect Syntax (ScanDiaSyn), Leikanger, Norway, August 25, 2005.

Quantifiers and Phases.
Grammatik i Fokus [Grammar in Focus], Lund University, Sweden, February 10, 2005.

Quantifier Movement and Derivation by Phase - Now You See It, Now You Don't.
Workshop on Comparative and Theoretical Syntax.When and why do constituents move?,
Dep. of English, Univ. of Aarhus, December 14-16, 2004.
[abstract]

Theories of Long-distance Dependencies.
Workshop on Comparative and Theoretical Syntax.When and why do constituents move?,
Dep. of English, Univ. of Aarhus, December 14-16, 2004.

On the Synchronic and Diachronic Status of the Negative Adverbials ikke and not.
Workshop on the Syntax of English and the Nordic languages,
Ninth Nordic Conference for English Studies, Aarhus, May 27-29, 2004.
[abstract]

Negation and Infinitives: att inte vara or að vera ekki.
Grammatik i Fokus [Grammar in Focus], Lund University, Sweden, February 6, 2004.
[abstract]

Negative Objects, NEG-shift, and Crosslinguistic Microvariation.
Workshop on Syntactic Microvariation,
20th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, University of Helsinki, January 7-9, 2004.
[abstract]

Sentential Negation & Indefinite Objects.
Seminar on Language Typology. Center for Linguistics, University of Aalborg, Denmark, October 25, 2003.

OBJ-shift, NEG-shift & Double Objects.
ZAS Syntaxzirkel meeeting, Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS), Berlin, Germany, July 3, 2003.

NEG-shift and Repair Strategies: Pied Piping vs. Preposition Stranding.
ZAS-Potsdam Workshop on OT-SYNTAX+, Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS), Berlin, Germany, May 16-17, 2003.
[abstract]

NEG-shift in the Scandinavian Languages and English.
Grammatik i Fokus [Grammar in Focus], Lund University, Sweden, February 6, 2003.

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Teaching:

Morphology & Syntax

Some additional helpful extra material for the intro course in GB syntax.

Summary handout ("Everything in 12 pages")

Constituency tests

How to draw syntactic trees:

MS Word 2010 (NEW - please provide feedback)

MS Word 2003 (OLD...) [English] [Danish]

Exercises in syntactic analysis

0. A small set of exercises (with solutions)

1. Some extra exercises (with solutions)

2. Some more extra exercises (also with solutions)

3. More of those extra exercises (also with solutions)

4. Even more extra exercises (also with solutions)

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Last updated November 30, 2011.

Research:	Research interests	...	Curriculum Vitae
Download:	Papers	Handouts	Teaching