Three-year ESRC project on ‘Place, mobility and dialect differentiation in Romani’ concludes with a bang

This past Thursday marked the official conclusion of the three-year ESRC funded project on ‘Place, mobility and dialect differentiation in Romani’ under the supervision of colleague Yaron Matras. This vibrant project concludes, appropriately, with a launch of the project’s Romani Morpho-Syntax database, which contains a comprehensive description of over 150 varieties of Romani, exemplified with phrases in transcription and sound. It can be accessed here:

http://romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/rms

The database is equipped with a search facility that allows the user to download search results or to plot them on a map, as well as to calculate hierarchies and correlations. An elaborate Help menu with online video tutorials guides the user through the maze of opportunities for data retrieval that the resource offers.

The programming was carried out by Christopher White with support from Christa Schubert, archive management by Charlotte Jones, and data processing by Ruth Hill and Hazel Gardner, with support from Veronica Schulman, Anton Tenser, and Viktor El?ík. The database structure was development by Yaron Matras and Viktor El?ík. Well done, Romani team!

Permanent lectureship in English sociolinguistics

The department is advertising for a Lecturer (=tenure track Assistant Professor in other systems) in English Sociolinguistics.  The deadline for applications is 15 September.
Details here.

Bermúdez-Otero at LSRL

Colleague Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero has been announced as an invited speaker at the 39th annual Linguistic Symposium on Romance Linguistics, to take place at the University of Arizona, March 26-29, 2009.  More details on the conference below the fold (via Linguist List).

Matras gives invited UNESCO lecture

Colleague Yaron Matras was one of the invited speakers at a recent UNESCO-sponsored workshop on “Multilingual terminology and structured content.”  Details here.

AHRC Research leave success

Public record perusal reveals that our department has been awarded an unprecedented *three* awards under the AHRC’s research leave scheme. These prestigious awards afford the holder a semester’s worth sabbatical at the AHRC’s expense.  Congratulations to colleagues Maciej Baranowski, Eva Schultze-Berndt, and Yaron Matras!

Vincent at Oxford Workshop on Romance Verb Morphology

Colleague Nigel Vincent will present a paper entitled “Non-Finite Forms and the Paradigm in Latin and (Italo-)Romance” at the First Oxford Workshop on Romance Verb Morphology on Thursday, 28 August. Details on the rest of the workshop (via Linguist List) below the fold.

Harris awarded honorary degree at Exeter

Former vice-chancellor and Manchester linguist Professor Sir Martin Harris has been awarded an honorary degree by the University of Exeter.  Read about it here.

Morphology and Language History

Recent postdoc Beth Evans‘ co-edited book Morphology and Language History has just been released.  The book announcement (via Linguist List) can be found below the fold.