Plenary speakers

The following scholars have kindly agreed to give a plenary lecture at ISLE8:

University of Victoria

Alexandra D’Arcy is Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Sociolinguistics Research Lab (SLRL) at the University of Victoria (Canada). She specializes in the study of language variation and change, combining quantitative modelling with her interest in theoretical linguistics. She has published widely on lexical, phonological, syntactic, morphosyntactic, and discourse-pragmatic variation and change, both from a synchronic and from a diachronic point of view. Her current project examines the role of children in advancing language change.

To be announced soon.

University of the Basque Country

María del Pilar García Mayo is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of the Basque Country (Spain) and Director of the research group Language and Speech (www.laslab.org). One of the strands in her research is grounded in generative linguistic theory and focuses on second and third language acquisition, specifically on various aspects of English grammatical structure in bilingual Basque-Spanish speakers. A second line of research delves into cognitive-interactionist theory, examining the impact of conversational interactions on language development in low-input, foreign language settings.

To be announced soon.

Heidelberg University

Daniela Landert is Professor of English Linguistics at Heidelberg University (Germany). Her main area of expertise is pragmatics. Her research focuses on spontaneous and performed language, the pragmatics of fiction, historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, stance and modality, news discourse, and mass media communication. She is currently investigating the impact of spontaneous spoken language on linguistic forms and functions. In a recent project, she examined epistemic stance in Early Modern English, refining methods for analysing pragmatic functions through electronic corpora.
To be announced soon.

University of Edinburgh

Graeme Trousdale is Professor of Linguistics and English Language at the School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences of the University of Edinburgh (Scotland). His main research interests involve constructionalization and constructional change, English historical linguistics, cognitive linguistics, including studies on regularity and creativity in both language and music. His latest research focuses on word-formation change in Word Grammar and the diachronic development of morphological constructions.

To be announced soon.

University of Freiburg
[Presidential address]

Bernd Kortmann, President of the International Society for the Linguistics of English, is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Freiburg (Germany) and Speaker of the Board of Directors of the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS). A specialist in English and areal European linguistics, his main research interest focuses on the comparative grammar of non-standard varieties of English around the world, especially from a typological perspective.
To be announced soon.