Key details
Professor Maria J Arche
Deputy Director, Institute of Inclusive Communities and Environments; Professor of Linguistics & Spanish; Lead, Centre for Research in Language and Heritage (CREL)
María J. Arche obtained a PhD in Theoretical Linguistics & Language Acquisition under the supervision of Tim Stowell (University California Los Angeles) and Violeta Demonte (Autonomous University of Madrid). She later on held an ESRC postdoctoral position at the University of Southampton and visiting scholarships at the Universities of Massachusetts Amherst, Groningen and Tromsø.
María does research in the (morpho)syntax-semantics interface, to understand the correspondences between forms and meaning in language. She studies the elements languages have to convey information about time (tense and aspect) across categories (verbs, but also nouns and adjectives). Maria has investigated these topics in the grammar of Spanish and also their acquisition and crosslinguistic variation, publishing works that capture empirical data from large sets of languages and detailed theoretical analyses.
She has been a fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study (NIAS) of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in 2021-2022 and 2024, as coordinator of a NIAS-Lorentz theme-group and individually. María also serves as the secretary of the British Committee for Linguistics in Education (CLiE).
Since 2018 she has created initiatives to increase the understanding of language difficulties across populations. Outcomes of this work include the ATLAS Manifesto Think Language First, launched at the House of Lords in January 2024 in partnership with the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapy.
María Arche is the Chair of the transnational EU COST Action Justice to Youth Language Needs, which comprises linguists, speech and language therapists as well as legal, health and youth justice professionals from over 30 countries. The platform is set to address the compromised access to justice of (young) people because of their un-identified language needs, create effective language assessments and improve awareness across services.
Responsibilities within the university
- Deputy Director, Institute for Inclusive Communities and Environments
- Lead, Centre for Research in Language and Heritage -CREL
- LING 1039 Syntax and Semantics (MA)
- LING 1037 Language Variation and Acquisition (MA)
- LING 1032 Advanced Language Structure and Meaning
- LING 1045 Clinical Linguistics
Awards
Erasmus + Scheme, University of Groningen. 2018
As Principal Investigator
- 2021-2022 Accessible Tool for Language Assessment at Schools (ATLAS)
Theme-Group Fellowship, Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Lorentz Centre. - 2018-2019 Tense as a clinical marker, University of Greenwich Competitive Round
- 2014-2015 Copulas across languages, University of Greenwich Competitive Round
- 2011-2014 The morpho-syntax of adjectives, University of Greenwich Competitive Round
As Project member and beneficiary in different roles
- 2014-2017 Grasping Meaning across Languages and Learners (GraMALL), Dutch NWO
- Workgroup Leader, Grammar tools and Perspective Taking
- 2013-2015 Semantic and procedural content of Spanish categories, Spanish Ministry of Economy
PhD scholarships
- 2017 50% University of Greenwich 50% University of Groningen
- 2012 University of Greenwich
Research / Scholarly interests
- (Morpho)syntax-semantics interface
- Language development across populations
- Tense and Aspect across categories, copulas
Arche, M. J. 2006. Individuals in Time: Tense, Aspect and the Individual/Stage Distinction, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Arche, M.J. (ed.) 2014.Aspect across languages: semantic primitives, morpho-syntactic representation and the limits of cross-linguistic variation. Topic/Comment Special Issue of Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. Springer. [data from 12 languages]
Arche, M.J., A. Fábregas and R. Marín (eds.) 2014. Aspect and argument structure of adjectives and participles, Special Issue for the journal Lingua 149.
Arche, M.J., A. Fábregas and R. Marín (eds.). 2019. The Grammar of Copulas Across Languages, Studies in Theoretical Linguistics, Oxford University Press. [data from 17 languages]
Arche, M.J., J-W Zwart, H. Demirdache and H. Borer (eds.). In press. Footprints of Phrase Structure. Studies in syntax in honor of Tim Stowell. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. [data from 15 languages]
Key funded projects
As Principal Investigator
2023 Language development in late childhood and adolescence: next steps in bridging research, practice and policy, British Academy & Wellcome Trust conference grant (March 2025) £23,400
2023-2027 Justice for language needs: human rights undermined by an invisible disadvantage, Chair COST Action, 160+ researchers/practitioners/stakeholders 30 countries c.a. €600,000
2023-2025 When the questions matter: A pilot study on police interviews with young offenders across services, University of Greenwich £15,000
2021-2022 Accessible Tool for Language Assessment at Schools (ATLAS), Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies, international NIAS-Lorentz Theme Group Fellowship, value €200,000
Media activity
Maria's Inaugural Professorial Lecture here
View TEDx talk Why We Need More Linguists in Schools
On Perfective but incomplete situations, SOAS, University of London