Benjamin Molineaux
Lecturer
- Linguistics and English Language
- School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences
Contact details
Address
- Street
-
Room 1.10, Dugald Stewart Building
- City
- 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH8 9AD
Availability
By appointment
Background
As of April 2021, I am a Lecturer in Linguistics in our department.
I recently finished a three-year Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship entitled "Digital methods in New-World language change: Words & sounds in older Mapudungun", which explores the 400-year textual history of Mapudungun, the ancestral language of the Mapuche people of south-central Chile and Argentina. In order to explore the development of the language's phonology and morphology, I have created (and continue to update) the Corpus of Historical Mapudungun.
I have been a member of the Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics since 2014, when I came to Edinburgh to join the FITS Project (From Inglis to Scots: Mapping sounds to spellings). As part of that team, I used spelling variation within the Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots to track the development of the Scots sounds across time and space.
I am generally interested in Historical Phonology and, in particular, prosodic structure and its impact on morphology. I have applied these interests to my work on Mapudungun, Older Scots and Old and Middle English.
Responsibilities & affiliations
The Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics (Secretary)
The English Language Research Group (Convenor)
Undergraduate teaching
In 2021-2022 I will be involved in the running of the following courses:
- LEL1A (Language puzzles component throughout the course; Introduction to phonetics)
- LEL2D: Cross-linguistic Variation: Limits and Theories (Linguistic typology and theory; Phonology and language diversity)
Postgraduate teaching
In 2021-2022 I will be involved in the running of the following courses:
- Scots and Scottish English (Hons./MSc)
- Phonological Theory (Hons./MSc – Course Organiser)
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Areas of interest for supervision
I am keen to supervising graduate/doctoral projects in phonology or historical linguistics, particulary if they have a focus on Scots or the New World.
Research summary
Historical phonology, morpho-phonlogy, stress systems, stress perception, Mapudungun (Araucanian), Old and Middle English, Older Scots
Research activities
-
The dental-alveolar contrast in Mapudungun: Loss, preservation and extension
(15 pages)
In:
Linguistics Vanguard, vol. 8, pp. 661-675
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2021-0080
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
El Sermón en Lengua de Chile en el Corpus Histórico del Mapudungun: De texto colonial a texto digital
(30 pages)
In:
Lenguas y Literaturas Indoamericanas, vol. 23, pp. 21-50
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
English Historical Linguistics: Historical English in Contact
Research output: › Book (Published) -
The Corpus of Historical Mapudungun: Morpho-phonological parsing and the history of a Native American language
In:
Corpora, vol. 18
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Accepted/In press) -
A grapho-phonologically parsed corpus of medieval Scots: Variation across time
In:
Corpora
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Accepted/In press) -
A reassessment of word prominence in Mapudungun: Phonological vs. morphological activation
Research output: › Chapter (peer-reviewed) (Accepted/In press) -
Phonotactics, graphotactics and contrast: The history of Scots dental fricative spellings
(29 pages)
In:
English Language and Linguistics, vol. 25, pp. 91-119
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674319000479
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Kuyfike awkiñ dungu, ecos de voces antigua: Textos de la tradición oral mapuche recopilados a fines del siglo XIX
(186 pages)
Research output: › Book (Published) -
Visualising pre-standard spelling practice: Understanding the interchange of ‹ch(t)› and ‹th(t)› in Older Scots
(12 pages)
In:
Journal of Data Mining and Digital Humanities, vol. N/A, pp. 1-12
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Special Issue on Visualisations in Historical Linguistics: Introduction
(5 pages)
In:
Journal of Data Mining and Digital Humanities, vol. N/A, pp. 1-4
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Editorial (Published)