The English Language Research Group

English Language people

This is a list of many of the members of the English Language Research Group. Most of those listed here also teach on the English Language undergraduate and postgraduate programmes taught in the department, and are thus members of Department of Linguistics and English Language.

For a full list of people in LEL, click here. Click here for the English Language homepage.

Academic staff

Linda van Bergen History of English (especially Old and Middle English) l.vanbergen@ed.ac.uk
Derek Britton
Honorary Fellow		 History of English dialects (especially 1500-1800), Middle English derek.britton@ed.ac.uk
Claire Cowie Morphology, Early Modern English, World Englishes, English in India claire.cowie@ed.ac.uk
Heinz Giegerich Phonological and morphological theory in relation to English heinz.giegerich@ed.ac.uk
Nikolas Gisborne English Syntax, lexical/conceptual semantics, argument structure nik.gisborne@ed.ac.uk
Patrick Honeybone Phonological theory, historical phonology, variation in English in Northern England patrick.honeybone@ed.ac.uk
Charles Jones
Honorary Fellow		 History of English and Scots, Late Modern English charles.jones@ed.ac.uk
Margaret Laing Research Fellow, Institute for Historical Dialectology

m.laing@ed.ac.uk
Institute for Historical Dialectology
Roger Lass
Honorary Fellow		 Institute for Historical Dialectology --
Norman Macleod
Honorary Fellow		 Stylistics and the language of fiction, text and discourse analysis norman.macleod@ed.ac.uk
Warren Maguire History of English, sociolinguistics, variation in English in Northern England, Ulster and Scotland w.maguire@ed.ac.uk
April McMahon
Head of College		 Historical linguistics, phonological theory, varieties of English april.mcmahon@ed.ac.uk
Geoffrey Pullum English Syntax and Morphology, Mathematical or Computational Linguistics,
Syntactic Typology and Universals, Interaction of Syntax and Phonology		 gpullum@ling.ed.ac.uk
Chris Robinson
Honorary Fellow		 Scots, Northern Middle English, writing skills chris.robinson@ed.ac.uk
Graeme Trousdale Social variation in English, Cognitive Grammar graeme.trousdale@ed.ac.uk
Keith Williamson Research Fellow, Institute for Historical Dialectology

i.k.williamson@ed.ac.uk
Institute for Historical Dialectology

Past members of the English Language Research Group include

John Anderson History of English, Dependency Grammar and Phonology
Fran Colman Old English

Recent collaborators include

Bas Aarts (UCL) David Adger (Queen Mary) Joan Beal (Sheffield)
Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero (Manchester) Philip Carr (Montpelier) Karen Corrigan (Newcastle)
Paul Heggarty (Cambridge) Anneli Meurman-Solin (Helsinki) Hermann Moisl (Newcastle)
Ingo Plag (Siegen) Nikolaus Ritt (Vienna) Elizabeth Traugott (Stanford)

English Language research postgraduates

These are some of the current and recent postgraduates in the Department carrying out research in English Language. For a fuller list of postgrads in LEL, click here.

Rhona Alcorn The syntax of the Old English Prepositional Phrase
Will Barras Historical Sociophonology of Lancashire English
Lynn Clark A Cognitive Grammar approach to sociolinguistic variation in Modern Scots
Sarah Collie English stress-preservation and Stratal Optimality Theory
Tanya Ekanayaka Bilingualism and Sri Lankan English
Wojtek Gardela Aspect in present participle and verbal noun constructions in Older Scots and Northern Middle English
Hiroshi Obara Politeness and modality in Late Modern English
Ela Majocha Some Early Middle English dialect features in the South-East Midlands. An onomastic study
Marleen Spaargaren Change in laryngeal specifications in the history of English
Penny Thompson Old English morphophonologcal change in Optimality Theory