I am an Assistant Professor at New York University, working primarily on theoretical syntax. Previously I was a Postdoctoral Researcher on the Scots Syntax Atlas (SCOSYA) project at the University of Glasgow (2015-2018), and before that I had positions at Newcastle University (2014-2015), the University of Edinburgh (2011-2014) and the University of Strathclyde (2010-2011). I got my PhD from Strathclyde, under the supervision of Nigel Fabb.
I work a variety of topics in syntactic theory, such as ellipsis, negation, reconstruction and scope, relative clauses, Celtic syntax and Scots dialect syntax, and I also do (or used to do) work in the area of literary linguistics, including the syntax of poetry and generative metrics. My papers and handouts from this work can be downloaded on the "Papers etc" page; comments/queries are always welcome. I've let this site get a bit out of date, but if there's anything you want to read that's not available then let me know and I'll send you it.
I'm now a co-editor (with Itai Bassi) of Snippets, a journal of mini-papers on syntax and semantics. Please send us your submissions!
Here's a more up-to-date picture of my dog Molly, with me.
Contact
I can be contacted by email on gary.thoms <at> gmail.com or thesamefirstbit <at> nyu.edu or by snailmail at
Department of Linguistics
10 Washington Place
New York, NY 10003