Mark Richard Lauersdorf
RECENT HIGHLIGHTS
Invited Keynote Presentation: at the conference "Mobility, variability and changing literacies in Modern Times" at Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands - 11-13 June 2014
Invited Specialist: for historical sociolinguistic corpora and data visualization at the workshop "Historical data (esp. letter) collections: practices and standards"
Sponsored by the project "Letters of Artisans and the Labouring Poor (LALP)" at Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands - 9 November 2012
Invited Course: "Dialect Continua, Political Borders, Standard Languages – Data, Interpretation, Visualization"
Taught at the 6th Summer School in Historical Sociolinguistics, organized by the Historical Sociolinguistics Network (HiSoN) at Frauenchiemsee, Bavaria, Germany - 9-16 August 2012
[German press release]
Invited Day-Long Workshop: "Corpora for Language Learning and Linguistic Research"
Presented at Suranaree University of Technology, Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand - 13 February 2012
Invited Keynote Presentation: "Mobility, Mobilization, Möbius Strips: concepts and practices for digital technologies in language teaching and learning"
Presented at the 10th AsiaCALL International Conference, Bangkok, Thailand, organized by the Language Center at Srinakharinwirot University, Bangkok, Thailand - 9-11 February 2012
Current Research
I am beginning a large-scale international collaborative project with the long-range objectives to:
- create a model of a digital linguistic corpus suitable for full-scale historical sociolinguistic investigation of diachronic language contact and language change phenomena; and
- develop a set of investigative tools overlaying the corpus that will allow for quantitative/statistical analyses and a range of visualizations of the data drawn directly from the corpus.
The team assembled for this project includes colleagues from Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States who are specialists in corpus-based historical sociolinguistics (working with a range of Germanic and Slavic languages) and specialists in quantitative/statistical analysis and graphic visualization of linguistic data. We are currently in the early development stages, including project planning meetings and preparation of applications for external funding.
Research Interests
- Historical sociolinguistics, particularly diachronic investigation of language normalization/standardization in language contact situations
- Annotation and markup of digital historical corpora for historical sociolinguistic research, and the use of statistical and visualization software and digital technologies to create new interfaces for the presentation, visualization, and interpretation of historical corpora
- Historical and contemporary sociolinguistics of Romance, Germanic, and Slavic contact zones
- Indigenous minority languages (current focus on Western and Central Europe)
- Language planning and linguistic legislation (current focus on Western and Central Europe)
Courses taught (at U of Kentucky and previously)
- Introduction to Linguistics I & II
- Introduction to Language Study
- Nature of the English Language
- Historical Linguistics
- Corpus Linguistics
- Historical Sociolinguistics
- The Germanic Languages: Comparative History and Structure
- Ethnic, Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in France
- Slavic, Romance, Germanic and Classical Languages in Space and Time
- Sociolinguistic Issues in Modern Russia and the States of the Former Soviet Union
Editorial Positions
- Editorial Board of Slavia Centralis
- Editorial Board of Jazykovedný časopis
- Editorial Board of Slovenská reč
Selected Print Publications
Books and Edited Volumes:
- The Morphology of 16th-Century Slovak Administrative-Legal Texts and the Question of Diglossia in Pre-Codification Slovakia. München: Verlag Otto Sagner, 2010. (Slavistische Beiträge 473)
- Slavia Centralis Vol. 3, No. 1 and Vol. 3, No.2 (special volume: Papers from the 6th Congress of the International Society for Dialectology Geolinguistics (SIDG), Maribor, Slovenia, 14-18 September 2009). Maribor, Slovenia: Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor, 2010. (Co-edited with Mihaela Koletnik, Astrid Nahl, Marc L. Greenberg.)
[ Full online access: Vol. 3, No. 1 and Vol. 3, No.2 ] - Slavic Sociolinguistics in North America, special double issue of the Journal of Slavic Linguistics, Vol. 17. Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica Publishers, 2009. (Co-edited with Curt F. Woolhiser.)
[ Contents and Abstracts (html) ] - The Question of 'Cultural Language' and Interdialectal Norm in 16th Century Slovakia: A Phonological Analysis of 16th Century Slovak Administrative-Legal Texts. München: Verlag Otto Sagner, 1996. (Slavistische Beiträge 335)
Articles and Chapters:
- (forthcoming 2013) "Eugen Pauliny and Historical Sociolinguistics"
- "Slovencina na zaciatku mladšieho predspisovného obdobia (15. – 16. storocie): Ked ani viac dát nestací" (= "Slovak at the Beginning of the Early Pre-Codification Period (15th-16th Centuries): When Even More Data Isn't Enough"), in: Varia XX. Bratislava: Slovenská jazykovedná spolocnost pri SAV, 2012: 391-394.
[ Complete volume in PDF ] - "Slavic Sociolinguistics in North America: Lineage and Leading Edge", in: Slavic Sociolinguistics in North America, special double issue of the Journal of Slavic Linguistics, vol. 17.1-2 (2009): 3-52.
[ PDF download ] - "Protestant Language Use in 17th Century Slovakia in a Diglossia Framework", in: Peter Ženuch, ed. Život slova v dejinách a jazykových vztahoch
.
Bratislava: Slavistický kabinet SAV, 2003: 49-60.
[ PDF download ] - "Slovak Standard Language Development in the 15th-18th Centuries: A Diglossia Approach", in: Laura A. Janda, Ronald Feldstein, and Steven Franks, eds.
Indiana Slavic Studies
(Bloomington, Indiana), Vol. 13 (2002): 245-264.
[ PDF download ] - "Kultúrna slovencina administratívno-právnych textov zo 16. storocia. 'Co s fonológiou a morfológiou?' " (= "Cultural Slovak in 16th Century Slovak Administrative-Legal Texts. 'What About Phonology and Morphology?' "), in: Mira Nábelková, ed. Varia VII. Bratislava: Slovenská jazykovedná spolocnost pri SAV, 1998: 308-312.
[ PDF download || Complete volume in PDF ]
Selected Digital Publications
Digital Projects:
- (with Jane Calvert). The John Dickinson Writings Project. Collaboratory for Research in Computing for Humanities, University of Kentucky, 2010-present.
- (with Abigail Firey). The Carolingian Canon Law Project. Collaboratory for Research in Computing for Humanities, University of Kentucky, 2008-present.
- (with Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby). Russian Folk Religious Imagination. Collaboratory for Research in Computing for Humanities, University of Kentucky, 2007-present.
Conference Proceedings:
- (with Dorothy Carr Porter). AudioCast - Changing the Center of Gravity: Transforming Classical Studies Through Cyberinfrastructure, October 5, 2007. Collaboratory for Research in Computing for Humanities, University of Kentucky, 2007. Latest update: 19 Feburary 2008.
- VideoCast - University of Kentucky Digital Scholarship Colloquium II, October 4, 2007. Collaboratory for Research in Computing for Humanities, University of Kentucky, 2007. Latest update: 4 February 2008.
