Anna Brandal
About
I am a PhD candidate in English linguistics at the Department of Language and Literature. I work in theoretical syntax and semantics, and I am especially interested in nominal phrases, anaphoric expressions, reference, ellipsis, and functional categories within the nominal phrase. You can read more about my PhD-project under "Research".
Before starting as a PhD candidate at NTNU, I completed my MA in English linguistics, also at NTNU. My MA thesis dissected the popular DP-hypothesis, arguing against this hypothesis when it comes to explaining ellipsis licensing within the nominal phrase. I have a BA in English from UiB, a year course in Latin from NTNU, and a teaching certificate (PPU) from NTNU.
Research
My PhD-project is concerned with nominal anaphora with type reference in English and Norwegian. These are anaphoric expressions which refer to nominal elements (i.e things and concepts), and which are either part of a nominal phrase (a big one / en stor en), or which constitute a nominal phrase on its own (like one, that, det). To understand what these kinds of expressions refer to, they need an antecedent, i.e. something previously mentioned or something available in the context. The nominal anaphora I investigate can have type reference. That is, they can refer back to the same type of thing signified by their antecedent, but not the same entity. Through corpus studies and acceptability judgement surveys, I aim to investigate what is needed for the interpretation of these kinds of expressions, how the structure (syntax) and meaning (semantics) of these expressions can be analysed, and how they behave in sentences.
The project is supervised by Andrew Weir and Kaja Borthen.
I am part of the research group ForMAAL.
Research interest:
- Nominal phrases
- Reference and anaphora resolution
- Elliptical constructions
- Functional categories
- Generative syntax and semantics
- (Formal) Pragmatics
- Corpora and the use of corpora in theoretical/introspective linguistics
Publications
Teaching
I am currently involved in the following course(s):
Outreach
2026
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Conference lectureBrandal, Anna; Weir, Andrew William. (2026) Post-adjectival NP ellipsis in Norwegian: Focus movement versus head-licensing. The 8th Experimental and Corpus-Based Approaches to Ellipsis workshop (ECBAE 8)