Visiting Scholar: Celeste Rodríguez Louro

We would like to introduce you to a Visiting Scholar to the Department January 9-18: Dr. Celeste Rodríguez Louro from the University of Western Australia in Perth, Australia. Celeste’s area of specialization is Language Variation and Change. She works on the structural and discourse-related aspects of Australian English, including present perfect/preterit alternations, epistemic phrases, tense variation and quotative verbs. She recently organized the 2012 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society in December 2012, where our own Keren Rice presented one of the plenary talks. 

http://www.uwa.edu.au/people/Celeste.rodriguezlouro

Celeste will be giving a talk in the LVC Research Group January 11, 12:10 pm entitled: Quotatives and tense variation in cross-generational Australian English speech. All are welcome.

 The reason for her visit is to collaborate with Sali on a project on variation and change in narrative structure in Australian English. She will be tapping the Sali’s expertise in LVC generally, but also her knowledge of the study of quotative verbs in particular. However, please note that Celeste is interested in talking to members of our faculty about related research interests.

Celeste’s current project traces the development of story-telling in Australian English, offering the first systematic sociolinguistic analysis of quotatives by Australians born since 1873. Sali’s studies of the quotative system have noted a shift in narrative style and this finding has been echoed by studies in other varieties of English as well. English-speaking people appear to be increasingly imbuing their stories with reports of their thoughts and feelings. Celeste’s research question is: has this changed in Australian narratives as well? This project will draw on an abundance of existing, but yet untapped, historical linguistic data: the Oral History Collection at the State Library of Western Australia. Her plan is to augment the Library’s Collection, and add rich annotated transcription and digitised materials, creating a wealth of resources for further research. Her collaboration with Sali (and with Alex D’Arcy at Victoria) will lead to large-scale comparative studies.

Here are a few of her current publications:

*Colantoni, Laura & Celeste Rodríguez Louro (Eds). (Forthcoming). Perspectivas teóricas y experimentales sobre el español de la Argentina [Theoretical and experimental perspectives on Argentinian Spanish]. Madrid: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Accepted 14 November 2012.

*Rodríguez Louro, Celeste &Thomas Harris. (Forthcoming). Evolution with an attitude: The grammaticalization of epistemic/evidential verbs in Australian English. English Language and Linguistics 17:3.

*Rodríguez Louro, Celeste. (In press). Quotatives Down Under: Be like in cross- generational Australian English speech. English World-Wide 34:1.

Welcome, Celeste!

(Post courtesy of Sali Tagliamonte)