I graduated from the University of Amsterdam in 1986 with an MA in English Language and Literature, and extracurricular courses in the Scandinavian Department (Old Icelandic) in Amsterdam and the Celtic Department of the University of Utrecht (Middle Welsh). I also took some programming courses in Pascal. After a period of working as a translator and on short-term contracts as a teacher and researcher at the University of Amsterdam and other colleges of higher education, I obtained my PhD in 2000 at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (title of dissertation: Infinitival Complementation in Old and Middle English (LOT Dissertation Series 31),The Hague: Thesus). I have published The Rise of the To-Infinitive (2005, OUP), edited, with Ans van Kemenade, The Handbook of the History of English  (2006, Blackwell), and co-authored Morphosyntactic change: A comparative Study of Particles and Prefixes (2012, CUP). I have co-authored, with Wim van der Wurff, the Morphology and Syntax sections of the chapter on English language in The Year's Work in English Studies, vols. 81-86. My present research interest is the role of information structure in syntactic change.