Hot off the press in English Language and Linguistics is “Dialect levelling and Cockney diphthong shift reversal in South East England: the case of the Debden Estate” by Amanda Cole (Essex) and LEL’s Pat Strycharczuk. The study traces the development of traditional Cockney vowels (think “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plane”) in […]
July 30, 2021 by manling
Comments Off on Nini’s latest detective assignment
LEL’s chief detective, Andrea Nini, is on a new quest. This one concerns Charles Dickens. Dickens used shorthand, but he created his own version. As a result, some of his works are undeciphered until this day. If you want to know more, watch this talk by Andrea. But it gets better! The Dickens Code project, […]
December 28, 2019 by manling
Comments Off on Mancunians in English Language and Linguistics
A special issue of English Language and Linguistics is out now, and it comes with a very Mancunian twist. The special issue is on proper noun modifiers, and the guest editors are our own Tine Breban, and Manchester alumna Julia Kolkman (now at York). Tine is also an author on two contributions to the issue, […]
February 11, 2019 by manling
Comments Off on Lotte Sommerer at LEL seminar
This week’s LEL seminar is by Lotte Sommerer (Vienna), who will speak on ‘A constructional perspective on the development of the English article system’ The talk will be on Tuesday 12 Feb at 4.15 pm in room A113 in Samuel Alexander. As usual there will be drinks afterwards and everyone is welcome to join us […]
October 23, 2018 by manling
Comments Off on We’re all getting up on the lingo thanks to Andrea
Andrea Nini, our expert on all things language and crime, is now also expertly navigating the confusing world of social media. Andrea’s research on American slang terms traced though Twitter, joint with Jack Grieve and Diansheng Guo, features in this episode of Studies Show on Youtube. Essential viewing if you want to keep up with the […]
July 2, 2018 by manling
Comments Off on 10 minutes with… Dr Lauren Fonteyn.
After what seemed like an eternity, Manchet is back with another ’10 minutes with’-interview. And only just in time – because the staff member featured today will be leaving LEL for another department closer to what she calls home. Dr Lauren Fonteyn, a Belgian chocolate-, frites-, and beer-enthusiast, completed her PhD at the University of […]
March 18, 2018 by manling
Comments Off on Jack Grieve @ LEL Research Seminar
Next week, we welcome Jack Grieve at the LEL Research Seminars. Jack is a Professorial Fellow in Corpus Linguistics at the University of Birmingham. His primary research interests are “language variation and change through the quantitative analysis of large corpora of natural language data.” His talk will focus on language change led by cultural change […]
February 1, 2018 by manling
Comments Off on Andrea Nini, Dear Boss, and Saucy Jack
The talk of the day is LEL’s very own Andrea Nini, who recently published an article on authorship analysis of some ‘Jack the Ripper’ letters. The news has gotten, to put it lightly, massive attention, as reported in the university of Manchester’s news letter: A researcher at the University has solved a mystery surrounding Jack […]
October 27, 2017 by manling
Comments Off on Journal of Phonetics award for Strycharczuk
Manchet has previously reported on Pat’s painstaking research into pronunciation differences between ruler (=‘measuring device’) and ruler (=‘political leader’). Pat’s recent paper on this subject, titled ‘Gradual or abrupt? The phonetic path to morphologisation’ has been awarded a prize by The Journal of Phonetics for a Best Early Career Scholar’s Article of The Year. The […]
September 26, 2017 by manling
Comments Off on Ditte Boeg Thomsen at LEL Research Seminar
This academic year’s LEL Research Seminar series will kick off on October 3rd with a presentation by Dr Ditte Boeg Thomsen. Ditte is a senior research associate at the Linguistics and English Language department of Lancaster University. Her expertise lies in the field of child language acquisition, and she is particularly interested in the relation […]
May 17, 2022 by manling
Comments Off on Cole and Strycharczuk in ‘English Language and Linguistics’