Topic description and stories

Winston Churchill’s famous Battle of Britain address, adapted here for a wartime poster, is one example of a remnant of the Verb Second constraint in English, which could hint at the existence of a universal grammar.

“Never was so much owed by so many to so few”: Could phrases like this hold clues about universal grammar?

16 Dec 2015

A new research project examining a linguistic construction called the Verb Second constraint could, academics believe, help to explain how people...

Read more
“Doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers from CIMR and the Institut Curie meet during a three-day retreat at the University of Kent, co-funded by the French Embassy, Cambridge and PSL” Credit: Sudarshan Gadadhar

Cambridge and French research consortium mark a year of collaborative projects

14 Jul 2015

A year of collaborative projects involving Cambridge and a consortium of Paris-based universities proves the potential of international partnerships...

Read more
Image from a 14th century manuscript of the Romance of the rose, one of the best-known texts of the Middle Ages

Conquering a continent: how the French language circulated in Britain and medieval Europe

22 Jan 2014

A 13th-century manuscript of Arthurian legend once owned by the Knights Templar is one of the star attractions of a new exhibition opening today at...

Read more
Frontispace of Vaugelas's Remarques sur la langue française (1647)

Le bon usage: using French correctly

01 Jan 2010

The purity and linguistic correctness of the French language has been closely guarded by the French for centuries. Professor Wendy Ayres-Bennett is...

Read more