English Seminar Staff

Worked at 7 universities (University of Lausanne; University of Fribourg; North Carolina State University, USA; University of Canterbury, New Zealand; University of Regensburg, Germany; University of Bern; University of Zurich). Lived in 5 countries on 3 continents (Switzerland, England, USA, New Zealand, Germany) and on 2 islands: Tristan da Cunha, St Helena. Never left home in spirit.

Married, one daughter (born September 2 2006)

Hobbies: cooking, reading, travelling, cross-country skiing and hiking, playing cards, playing and watching football (lifelong supporter of a club not all too popular at my workplace)

Social dialectology; Language variation and change; Sociolinguistics (historical and contemporary); Dialect geography and traditional dialectology; English historical linguistics; Contact linguistics (Contact dialectology, Pidgin and Creole linguistics); English as a World Language; Southern Hemisphere English.

1978-90  Schools in Basel, Switzerland

1990-94 University of Basel, Switzerland (French and English)

1994-97 University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Licence ès lettres, October 1997 (Degree in Linguistics, English and "Sciences du langage")

Aug. 1998 University College of London, England. Summer Course in English Phonetics

2001 Advanced Graduate Courses, NC State University, USA (Field-initiated research, ethnographic and quantitative methods of analysis, historical linguistic methodology, language variation and change, experimental phonetics, sociophonetics, speech synthesizing)

Dec. 2001 University of Fribourg, Switzerland, Ph.D. in Linguistics ("Non-standard Grammar and Geographical Isolation: The Genesis, Development and Structure of Tristan da Cunha English", xviii+370 pages, summa cum laude) 

April 2005 Habilitation (post-doctoral degree), University of Regensburg, Germany ("Phonotactic Variation and Change: The Synchronic and Diachronic Dimension of Consonant Cluster Reduction in English", viii+273 pages). Promotion to the rank of a Privatdozent (PD Dr.), Venia legendi in English linguistics

September 1992 - June 1993 Teaching Assistant (German, French). Department for Foreign Languages, Copley High School. Stalybridge, Tameside/Greater Manchester, England

October 1993 - July 1994 Teacher (German, French, English). Realschule Thierstein, Basel, Switzerland

November 1997 - August 1998 Assistant (to Prof. Peter Trudgill). Department of English; University of Lausanne, Switzerland

September 1998 - August 2000 Assistant (to Prof. Peter Trudgill). Department of English and Slavic; University of Fribourg, Switzerland

September 2000 - January 2002 Lecturer and Research Associate (collaboration with William C. Friday Distinguished Prof. Walt Wolfram and Prof. Erik R. Thomas). Department of English; North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC, USA

March 2002 - January 2003 Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Postdoctoral Fellow ("Origins of New Zealand English" (ONZE) Project, collaboration with Prof. Elizabeth Gordon, Prof. Lyle Campbell, Dr. Jennifer Hay, and Dr. Margaret Maclagan), Department of Linguistics, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

February 2003 - August 2005 Assistant Professor (C1) (collaboration with Prof. Dr. Edgar W. Schneider), Department of English and American Studies, University of Regensburg, Germany

April 2005 - August 2005 Privatdozent (PD Dr.). Department of English and American Studies, University of Regensburg, Germany

September 2005 - August 2006 Assistant Professor for English Historical Linguistics. Department of English, University of Bern, Switzerland

since September 2006 Associate Professor and Chair for English Linguistics. Department of English, University of Zurich, Switzerland

University of Fribourg, Switzerland (1998-2000): Sociolinguistics (Proseminar), Winter 1998-9, 1999-2000; English in the Southern Hemisphere (Proseminar), Summer 1999; Dialects and Accents of English in the British Isles (Proseminar), Winter 1999-2000; Bilingualism (Proseminar), Summer 2000

North Carolina State University, USA (2001): A History of the English Language (Seminar), Autumn 2001

University of Canterbury, New Zealand (2002): Sociolinguistics (Tutorials), Summer 2002

University of Regensburg, Germany (2003-5): Introduction to English Linguistics,  Summer 2003, 2004, 2005, Winter 2003-4, 2004-5; Language Change (Proseminar), Summer 2003; Historical Linguistics: Approaches, Theories, Methods (Proseminar), Winter 2003-4; English in North America: Sociolinguistic Perspectives (Proseminar), Summer 2004; English Morphology (Proseminar), Winter 2004-5; Semantics and Pragmatics (Proseminar), Summer 2005

University of Bern, Switzerland (2005-6): English Historical Linguistics (BA course), Winter 2005-6, Winter 2006-7; Research Methodology and Methods of Analysis (MA course; co-taught with Prof. Richard J. Watts), Winter 2005-6; Historical Variation in English (BA lecture), Winter 2005-6; English Phonology and Accents of English (MA course), Winter 2005-6; Macrolinguistics: Sociolinguistics, Psycho- and Neurolinguistics, Anthropological Linguistics (BA), Summer 2006; Research Methodology and Methods of Analysis (BA course), Summer 2006; English Words: History, Structure and Usage (MA lecture), Summer 2006

University of Zurich, Switzerland (2006-): Global English: Diffusion, Diversity and Change (Lecture), Summer 2006; Introduction to English Linguistics I (Proseminar/BA), Winter 2006-7; African American English (Seminar/MA), Winter 2006-7; Introduction to English Linguistics II (Proseminar/BA), Summer 2007; The Phonology of World English: Issues and Sample Analysis (Seminar/MA), Summer 2007

Methods X: International Conference on Methods in Dialectology (1999); Swiss Works in English Language and Linguistics (SWELL; 2000, 2004, 2005); New Ways of Analyzing Variation 29, 30, 32, 34; Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL) LXIV (2001); Annual meeting of the American Dialect Society (2002); Language and Society Conference of the New Zealand Linguistic Society (2002); Directions in Social Dialectology (2003); Diachronic Studies and Theories of Creolisation (Westminster Creolistics Workshop, 2004); International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE) 3 (2005); Sociolinguistics Symposium 16 (2006).

Invited guest lectures:

University of Fribourg, Switzerland (1998, 2004); University of Lausanne, Switzerland (1998); Georgetown University, Washington DC (2001, 2002); North Carolina State University (2002); University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand (2002); Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand (2002); University of Regensburg, Germany (2003, 2004, 2005); Jamestown, St Helena, South Atlantic Ocean (2003, invited lecture given to the St Helena National Trust); University of Murcia, Spain (2003); University of Cape Town, South Africa (2005); University of Essex, UK (2006); University of Basel, Switzerland (2006); Annual business meeting of the Swiss Association of University Teachers of English (SAUTE, 2006).

Books

__. 2003. Isolation and Language Change: Contemporary and Sociohistorical Evidence from Tristan da Cunha English (Palgrave Studies in Language Variation 1). Houndmills/Basingstoke, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (Reviewed in: English Language and Linguistics 8 (2004), pp. 159-63 (Laura Wright). Shortlisted for the 2004 BAAL (The British Association of Applied Linguistics) Book Prize.

__ & Karen Lavarello-Schreier. 2003. [Reprinted 2004, 2005]. Tristan da Cunha: History People Language. London: Battlebridge.

__. 2005. Consonant Change in English Worldwide: Synchrony meets Diachrony (Palgrave Studies in Language History and Language Change 3). Houndmills/Basingstoke, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

__. Under contract for publication (fc., 2007). St Helenian English: Origins, Evolution and Variation (Series Varieties of English Around the World). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins. 

__. Under contract for publication (2008). Soziolinguistik und Sprachwandel im Englischen: Eine Einführung. (Reihe Grundlagen der Anglistik und Amerikanistik). Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag. 

__, Peter Trudgill, Edgar Schneider & Jeffrey P. Williams (eds.). Under contract for publication (2009). The Lesser-known Varieties of English. Cambridge University Press (Studies in English Language Series).

Articles

1998

__. 1998. "Reaction times in on-line processing of code-switches." Travaux Neuchâtelois en Linguistique (TRANEL) 28: 103-23.

2001

__. 2001. "The world's loneliest dialect." Language Magazine of Communication and Education 1: 28-31. [Reprinted in Wolfram, Walt & Ben Ward, eds. 2005. Voices of American English, pp. 210-4. Oxford/Malden MA: Blackwell]

2002

__. 2002a. "Terra incognita in the Anglophone world: Tristan da Cunha, South Atlantic Ocean." English World-Wide 23: 1-29.

__. 2002b. "Past be in Tristan da Cunha: The rise and fall of categoricality in language change." American Speech 77: 70-99.

__. 2002c. "English on the world's loneliest island." Department of English Concordia (Newsletter of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at NC State University). Vol. 2: 6.

__. 2002d. "Dynamic mixing or archaic retention? The ambiguous case of 'completive done' in Tristan da Cunha English." Diachronica 19: 135-76.

2003

__. 2003a. "Tracing the history of dialect transplantation in post-colonial English: The case of 3^rd person singular zero on Tristan da Cunha." Folia Linguistica Historica XXIII/1-2: 115-31.

__. 2003b. "An East Anglian in the South Atlantic? Interpreting morphosyntactic resemblances in terms of direct input, parallel development, and linguistic contact." In: Britain, David & Jenny Cheshire, eds. Social Dialectology. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins. 81-96.

__. 2003c. "Insularity and linguistic endemicity." Journal of English Linguistics 31: 249-72.

__. 2003d. "Convergence and language shift in New Zealand: Consonant cluster reduction in 19^th century Maori English." Journal of Sociolinguistics 7: 378-91.

__, Elizabeth Gordon, Jennifer Hay & Margaret Maclagan. 2003. "The regional and sociolinguistic dimension of /hw-/ maintenance and loss in early 20th century New Zealand English." English World-Wide 24: 245-69.

2004

Trudgill, Peter, Daniel Schreier, Daniel Long & Jeffrey P. Williams. 2004. "On the reversibility of mergers: /w/, /v/ and evidence from lesser-known Englishes." Folia Linguistica Historica, Vol. XXIV/1-2: 23-45.

Hay, Jennifer & Daniel Schreier. 2004. "Reversing the trajectory of language change: Subject-Verb agreement with BE in New Zealand English." Language Variation and Change 16: 209-35.

__. 2004. "English transported to the South Atlantic Ocean: Tristan da Cunha." In: Hickey, Raymond, ed. Transplanted Dialects. The Legacy of Colonial English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 387-401.

2005

__. 2005a. "On the loss of preaspiration in Early Middle English." Transactions of the Philological Society 103: 99-112.

__. 2005b. "#CCV- > #CV-: Corpus-based evidence of historical change in English phonotactics."  In Conde-Silvestre, Juan Camilo & Juan Manuel Hernãndez-Campoy, eds. Sociolinguistics and the History of English: Perspectives and Problems (Special issue of the International Journal of English Studies, 5.1): 77-99.

2006

__. 2006a. "The backyard as a dialect boundary? Individuation, linguistic heterogeneity and sociolinguistic eccentricity in a small speech community." Journal of English Linguistics 34: 26-57.

__, & Peter Trudgill. 2006. "The segmental phonology of 19^th century Tristan da Cunha English: Convergence and local innovation." English Language and Linguistics 10: 119-41.

Trudgill, Peter & Daniel Schreier. 2006. "Greece and Cyprus / Griechenland und Zypern." In: Ammon, Ulrich, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier & Peter Trudgill, eds. International Handbook of Language and Society / Ein internationales Handbuch zur Wissenschaft von Sprache und Gesellschaft 3 (2^nd ed.). Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. 1881-8.

__, Andrea Sudbury & Sheila Wilson. 2006. "English in the South Atlantic / Englisch im Südatlantik." In: Ammon, Ulrich, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier & Peter Trudgill, eds. International Handbook of Language and Society / Ein internationales Handbuch zur Wissenschaft von Sprache und Gesellschaft 3 (2^nd ed.). Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. 2131-7.

2007

__. 2007. “From individual to social significance: Greeting as an act of identity.” In: Skandera, Paul, ed. Phraseology and Culture in English (Topics in English Linguistics Series 54). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 353-74.

In Press/Forthcoming

__. 2008. "How Diagnostic are English universals." In Filppula, Markku, Juhani Klemola & Heli Pitkänen, eds. Vernacular Universals vs. Contact-Induced Language Change.

__, Peter Trudgill, Edgar Schneider and Jeffrey P. Williams. 2009. "Introducing the Lesser-known Varieties of English." In Schreier, Daniel, Peter Trudgill, Edgar Schneider & Jeffrey P. Williams, eds. The Lesser-known Varieties of English: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press.

__. 2009. "Tristan da Cunha." In Schreier, Daniel, Peter Trudgill, Edgar Schneider & Jeffrey P. Williams, eds. The Lesser-known Varieties of English: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press.

__. 2009. "St Helena." In Schreier, Daniel, Peter Trudgill, Edgar Schneider & Jeffrey P. Williams, eds. The Lesser-known Varieties of English: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press.

__, Peter Trudgill, Edgar Schneider and Jeffrey P. Williams. 2009. "Conclusion." In Schreier, Daniel, Peter Trudgill, Edgar Schneider & Jeffrey P. Williams, eds. The Lesser-known Varieties of English: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press.

__. 2009. "The consequences of migration and colonialism II: Overseas varieties." In: Auer, Peter & Jürgen E. Schmidt, eds. Language and Space: An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.

__, Wim Vandenbussche and Richard J. Watts. 2009. “Actuation and change from below.” In: Brinton, Laurel & Alexander Bergs, eds. Historical Linguistics of English: An International Handbook. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.

__. 2009. “Koinéisation and historical phonology.” In: Honeybone, Patrick & Joseph C. Salmons, eds. The Handbook of Historical Phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

__ and Laura Wright. fc. “Earlier evidence of St Helenian English.” In Hickey, Raymond, ed. Varieties in Writing: The Written Word as Linguistic Evidence. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins. 

__. fc. “Present-day phonology of St Helenian English.” In: Schulenburg, Alexander, ed. Language and Culture on the Island of St Helena, South Atlantic. London: Westminster Press.

Mesthrie, Raj & Daniel Schreier. fc. “Present-day syntax of St Helenian English.” In: Schulenburg, Alexander, ed. Language and Culture on the Island of St Helena, South Atlantic. London: Westminster Press.  

Reviews/Book notices

Paulston, Christina Bratt & G. Richard Tucker, eds. 2003. "Sociolinguistics: The essential readings." Oxford and Malden MA: Blackwell. English World-Wide 24 (2003): 314-7.

Crystal, David. 2004. The Stories of English. Penguin/Allen Lane. English World-Wide 26 (2005): 243-5.

Gordon, Elizabeth, Lyle Campbell, Jennifer Hay, Margaret Maclagan, Andrea Sudbury & Peter Trudgill. 2004. "New Zealand English: Its origins and evolution." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. English World-Wide 26 (2005): 352-8.

Jones, Mari C. and Ishtla Singh. 2005. "Exploring Language Change." London and New York: Routledge. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10 (2006).

Wiley, Terrence G. 2005. "Literacy and Language Diversity in the United States" (2^nd ed.). Washington DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Multilingua 25 (2006). 

English World-Wide: A Journal of Varieties of English, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins, ed. Edgar W. Schneider. Editorial assistant (2003-05).

Anonymous reviewer (ad hoc) for Language, Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, Multilingua and English World-Wide.

External reviewer of book proposals for Palgrave Macmillan.

English World-Wide: A Journal of Varieties of English, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins, ed. Edgar W. Schneider. Member of the Editorial Board.

Multilingua. Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, ed. Richard J. Watts. Member of the Editorial Board.