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)

Research affiliations

• Member of the SLICE (Standard Language Ideology in Contemporary Europe) research network at the Centre for Language Change in Real Time (LANCHART) at the University of Copenhagen (2020-present)
• Affiliate of the Angus McIntosh Centre (AMC) for Historical Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK (2016-present)
• Regional Faculty Associate of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center (REEEC) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA (2008-present)

Teaching interests and experience

I teach a broad range of courses across the areas of my research expertise. Courses I have taught at the University of Kentucky and elsewhere include the following:

• Introduction to Linguistics I & II
• Introduction to Language Study
• The World of Language
• Nature of the English Language
• Language and Borders
• History of the English Language
• Historical Linguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Language Contact
• Corpus Linguistics
• Corpus-Based Sociolinguistics
• Historical Sociolinguistics
• Advanced Historical Linguistics
• The Germanic Languages: Comparative History and Contemporary 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
• Sociolinguistics of Central and Eastern Europe
• Research Methods in Linguistics
• Qualitative Methods in Linguistics
• Research Seminar in Linguistic Theory and Typology
• Muster in Sprache / Sprache in Mustern: korpusbasierte Untersuchungen zu sprachlichen Patterns (Dresden)
• Social History of English [Družbena zgodovina angleščine] (Ljubljana)
• English Histotrical Grammar [Angleška historična slovnica] (Ljubljana)
• English Historical Linguistics - digital tools and methods [Angleško historično jezikoslovje] (Ljubljana)
• Laboratory in Linguistics - corpus lingusitics
• Advanced Laboratory in Linguistics - historical sociolinguistics
• Advanced Laboratory in Linguistics - corpus approaches to sociolinguistics
• Independent Study courses in such areas as: Linguistic Typology; Linguistic Landscapes.

Editorial Positions

• Editorial Board of Slavia Centralis ~ online access
• Editorial Board of Jazykovedný časopis ~ online access
• Editorial Board of Slovenská reč ~ online access
• Editorial Board of Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics
• Advisory Board of book series Historical Sociolinguistics: Studies on Language and Society in the Past

Selected Print Publications

Books:

• 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)
• 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)

Edited Volumes:

• English in Central Europe, special issue of ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries, Vol. 19.2. Ljubljana: Založba Univerze v Ljubljani, 2022. 225 pp. (Co-edited with Monika Kavalir).
• V zeleni drželi zeleni breg: Studies in Honor of Marc L. Greenberg. Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica Publishers, 2018 (appeared 2019). 410 pp. (Co-edited with Stephen M. Dickey.)
• Slovo a tvar v štrukúre a v komunikácii, special issue of Philologica (Zborník Filozofickej fakulty Univerzity Komenského) Vol. LXXII. Bratislava: Univerzita Komenského, 2013. 458 pp. (Co-edited with Gabriela Múcsková, Katarína Muziková, Zuzana Hargašová.)
• 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) ]

Articles and Chapters:

• "In search of patterns of historical language variation and user interaction (or: Who used what linguistic features with whom, when, where, why and how?)”. in: Jazykovedný časopis (Journal of Linguistics) 75.3 (2024): 330-347.
• “An Excursion into the Lost History of Historical Sociolinguistics”. (with Joseph Salmons), in: Jennifer Hendriks and B. Richard Page, eds. Investigating West Germanic Languages: Studies in honor of Robert B. Howell. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2024: 301-324.
• "Slovak" (language overview) (with Gabriela Múcsková), in: Brill Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics, Marc L. Greenberg, et al., eds. Leiden: Brill Publishers. Online publication 2022, print publication anticipated 2024.
• "Historical sociolinguistics and the necessity of interdisciplinary collaboration", in: Crossing Borders, Making Connections: Interdisciplinarity in Linguistics, Allison Burkette and Tamara Warhol, eds. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2021: 207-230.
• "'Mobility' and 'borders' in historical standard language development", in: Mobilität und Sprache / Mobility and Language, Mareitta Calderón, Bernadette Hofinger, and Emil Chamson, eds. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019: 13-23.
• "Historical (Standard) Language Development and the Writing of Historical Identities: A Plaidoyer for a Data-Driven Approach to the Investigation of the Sociolinguistic History of (Not Only) Slovak", in: V zeleni drželi zeleni breg: Studies in Honor of Marc L. Greenberg,  Stephen M. Dickey and Mark Richard Lauersdorf, eds. Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica Publishers, 2018 (appeared 2019): 199-218.
• "Mobility and Borders, Proximity and Distance: Theoretical and methodological considerations for historical sociolinguistics", in: Mobility, variability, and changing literacies in Modern times, Anita Auer and Mikko Laitinen, eds. Special issue of: Neuphilologische Mitteilungen CXIX.1 (2018): 21-38.
• "Linguistic Visualizations as 'objets d'art'?", in: Noah Bubenhofer and Marc Kupietz, eds. Visualisierung sprachlicher Daten [Visualization of Linguistic Data]. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2018: 91-122.
  [ PDF download ]
• "Eugen Pauliny and Historical Sociolinguistics", in: Slovo a tvar v štrukúre a v komunikácii, special issue of: Philologica (Zborník Filozofickej fakulty Univerzity Komenského) LXXII. Bratislava: Univerzita Komenského, 2013: 243-249.
• "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

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.

Research in Computing for Humanities

The Collaboratory for Research in Computing for Humanities (RCH), a research network at the University of Kentucky (UK), brings together faculty and students from engineering, computer science, and the humanities, arts, and social sciences for collaboration on research projects in the Digital Humanities. The RCH provides technical guidance and grant writing assistance to university faculty who wish to undertake computationally-based research in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, and it encourages and supports interdisciplinary projects among individuals and groups from UK and around the world.

• If you are a scholar in the Humanities, Arts, or Social Sciences at the University of Kentucky and are interested in digital methods, models, tools, environments, visualization, and presentation...
• If you are a UK Computer Scientist or Engineer and seek to apply your models, programs, systems, and equipment to problems, data sets, and objects from cultural, historical, and social research...
• If you are interested in investigating the potential benefits of collaborative work using digital research tools and methods with humanities, arts, and social science data in your scholarly work...

...the Collaboratory for Research in Computing for Humanities (RCH) can provide assistance to help you realize these goals.

How to Find Us

E-Mail: Convenor's E-Mail: lauersdorf {at} uky {dot} edu

On the web: http://www.rch.uky.edu/