Newcastle University

Background

After graduating from the Université de Poitiers with a Maîtrise ès Lettres, I obtained my Ph.D. from the Free University of Berlin with a thesis on French verb semantics. Subsequently, I joined the University of Tübingen. I was awarded the Habilitation (higher doctorate) degree there. Furthermore I held temporary positions at the Université Paris 7 – Denis Diderot and the University of Konstanz. I have been at Newcastle since January 2006, and was promoted to Reader in 2007.

Roles and Responsibilities

Director of the Centre for Research in Linguistics and Language Sciences

Degree Programme Director for the MA programme in Linguistics of European Languages

Qualifications

2002 Habilitation, University of Tübingen
1997 Ph.D., Freie Universität Berlin (summa cum laude)
1992 Maîtrise Lettres Modernes, Université de Poitiers (mention très bien)

Previous Positions

2004-2005 Hochschuldozent (fixed-term Senior Lecturer), University of Tübingen
2003-2004 Replacement professorship, University of Konstanz
1999-2000 Maître de conférences, Université Paris 7 Denis Diderot
1998-2004 Wissenschaftlicher Assistent (Fixed-term Lecturer B), University of Tübingen
1997-1998 Wissenschaftlicher Angestellter (Fixed-term Lecturer A), Universität Tübingen
1993-1997 Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (Fixed-term Lecturer A), Freie Universität Berlin

Memberships

Association for French Language Studies
Linguistic Association of Great Britain
Société Internationale de Diachronie du Français
International Pragmatics Association
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft
Deutscher Romanistenverband
Deutscher Italianistenverband

Research Interests

Language change in French and other Romance languages is my main research interest. I am intrigued by the way patterns of language use and communication can shape language structure over time. Specifically, I have worked on grammaticalisation, reanalysis, the rise of discourse markers, and the role of conversational implicatures in language change.
Some of my work is available at Newcastle's e-print repository and on my personal webpage.

Current Work

Currently I am working on diachronic change in the use of the French reflexive pronoun soi. I believe that such change can tell us a few things about a number of wider issues relevant to syntax, semantics and discourse.

Future Research

Together with a number of national and international colleagues, I am planning to compare the diachronic pathways of particles and other items at the left and the right periphery of the utterance. It is a basic property of human language that discourse unfolds in time. A logical implication of this is that the left and right margin of utterances neither behave in the same fashion nor are symmetrically opposed. We would thus expect that also language change in the left and right peripheries patterns in a cross-linguistically recurrent fashion.

Research Roles

Lead organiser of Association for French Language Studies annual conference in Newcastle 2012
Member of Local Site Committee for International Pragmatics Conference 2011 in Manchester
AHRC Peer Review College Member 2010-2013
External advisor for a graduate school on Ambiguity at the University of Tübingen

Postgraduate Supervision

Completed PhD supervision (co-supervised 50%):
Esme Winter-Froemel : Entlehnung und Lehnwortintegration aus der Perspektive der Sprachbenutzer (Loans and loanword integration from a usage-based perspective), 2009.
Huan-Li (Stella) Kao: Coherence and audience reception in subtitling with special reference to connectives, 2011.
Kevin McManus: The development of aspect in a second language, 2011.
I am currently co-supervising two PhD students.

Esteem Indicators

I am a member of the Editorial Boards of Revue Romane and Web Journal of French Media Studies. I have reviewed papers for a number of international journals and book publishers, as well as grant proposals for the AHRC. I am review panelist for the 2ème Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française in New Orleans 2010, and I am on the Advisory Boards of the Cahiers AFLS,  the Journal of Historical Syntax, and the Histoire et évolution du français series with Classiques Garnier.
I have been solicited on numerous occasions to give guest lectures and to present regular or plenary papers at conferences in a variety of countries.

Funding

2010 AHRC Fellowship for project on change in the expression of reflexivity in the history of French
2006 Newcastle University HASS Faculty Futures project award
2005 DFG travel grant for attending a conference in USA
2002 DAAD grant for trip to Brazil
1999-2005 Co-director (Beratender Wissenschaftler): Project on semantic change in body-part terms and on lexical motivation (PI: Peter Koch) as part of Colloborative Research Programme (SFB) Linguistic data structures, University of Tübingen
1993 Ph.D. scholarship, University of Hamburg

Undergraduate Teaching

SML 1019 Introduction to Linguistics
FRE 2044 Language Variation in Contemporary France (Module leader)
FRE 2061 French Level C General Language
FRE4002 Paris - Aspects of History and Culture
FRE 4012 Language change in French (Module leader)

Postgraduate Teaching

SML 8100 Semantic change in French
HSS8004 Qualitative methods for the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

• Waltereit R. Reflexive Marking in the History of French. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2012. In Press.
• Waltereit R. J'ai lu ce livre moi-même: Intensifiers in French. 2012.
• Dessi Schmid S, Detges U, Gévaudan P, Mihatsch W, Waltereit R, ed. Rahmen des Sprechens. Beiträge zu Valenztheorie, Varietätenlinguistik, Kognitiven und Historischen Semantik. Tübingen: Narr, 2011.
• Detges U, Waltereit R. Turn-taking as a trigger for language change. In: DessìSchmid, S., Detges, U., Gévaudan, P., Mihatsch, W., Waltereit, R, ed. Rahmen des Sprechens. Beiträge zu Valenztheorie, Varietätenlinguistik, Kognitiven und Historischen Semantik. Tübingen: Narr, 2011, pp.175-190.
• Waltereit R. Grammaticalization and discourse. In: Narrog, H., Heine, B, ed. Oxford Handbook on Grammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp.413-423.
• Waltereit R. On the origins of grammaticalization and other types of language change in discourse strategies. In: Davidse, K., Mortelmans, T, ed. Selected Papers from the New Reflections on Grammaticalization Conference Leuven 2008. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2012. In Press.
• Schwenter S, Waltereit R. Presupposition accommodation and language change. In: Davidse K; Vandelanotte L; Cuyckens H, ed. Subjectification, Intersubjectification, and Grammaticalization. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2010, pp. 75-102.
• Detges U, Waltereit R. Diachronic pathways and pragmatic strategies: Different types of pragmatic particles from a diachronic point of view. In: Hansen, M.M., Visconti, J, ed. Current Trends in Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics. Bingley: Emerald, 2009, pp.43-61.
• Beeching K, Waltereit R. Introduction. In: Armstrong, N; Beeching, K; Gadet, F, ed. Sociolinguistic Variation in Contemporary French. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2009, pp. 195-199.
• Hansen M, Waltereit R. On the Role of Generalized Conversational Implicature in Semantic Change. In: Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society. 2009, Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society.
• Detges U, Waltereit R. Introduction. In: Detges, U., Waltereit, R, ed. The Paradox of Grammatical Change: Perspectives from Romance. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2008, pp.1-12.
• Detges, U, Waltereit, R. Syntactic change from within and from without syntax: a usage-based analysis. In: Detges, U., Waltereit, R, ed. The Paradox of Grammatical Change: Perspectives from Romance. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2008, pp.13–30.
• Detges U, Waltereit R, ed. The Paradox of Grammatical Change: Perspectives from Romance. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2008.
• Waltereit R. Verb, Valenz, Satzbaupläne. In: Kolboom I; Kotschi T; Reichel E, ed. Handbuch Französisch: Sprache- Literatur- Kultur- Gesellschaft: Für Studium, Lehre, Praxis. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2008, pp. 267-274.
• Waltereit R. A propos de la genèse diachronique des combinaisons de marqueurs. L'exemple de bon ben et enfin bref. Langue Francaise 2007, 154, 94-128.
• Waltereit R, Detges U. Different functions, different histories: Modal particles and discourse markers from a diachronic point of view. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 2007, 6, 61-80.
• Waltereit R. Evolution diachronique des marqueurs discursifs et des modalisateurs - points en commun et divergences. In: Actes du XXIV Congrès International de Linguistique et Philologie Romanes. 2007, Aberystwyth, Wales: Tübingen: Niemeyer.
• Waltereit R. Abtönung: Zur Pragmatik und historischen Semantik von Modalpartikeln und ihren funktionalen Äquivalenten in romanischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2006.
• Waltereit R. Comparer la polysémie des marqueurs discursifs. In:Drescher, M., Frank-Job, B., ed. Les marqueurs discursifs dans les langues romanes. Approches théoriques et méthodologiques.Frankfurt:Peter Lang,2006, pp. 141-151.
• Hansen MBM, Waltereit R. GCI theory and language change. Acta linguistica hafniensia 2006,38 235-268.
• Mosegaard Hansen M-J, Waltereit R. On the role of generalized conversational implicature in semantic change. In: Chicago Linguistics Society.2006,Chicago:Chicago Linguistics Society
• Waltereit R. Rhetorik und Sprachwandel im Italienischen. In:Franceschini, R., et al., ed. Retorica: Ordnungen und Brüche: Beiträge des Tübinger Italianistentags.Tübingen:Narr,2006, pp. 89-99.
• Waltereit R. The rise of discourse particles in Italian: A specific type of language change. In: Fischer, K, ed. Approaches to Discourse Particles. Oxford (now Bingley): Elsevier (now Emerald), 2006, pp. 61-76.
• Waltereit R. La polifonía prosódica: Copiar un patrón entonativo. Revista Internacional de Linguistica Iberoamericana 2005,6 2 137-151.
• Waltereit R. Fossils of a former phonological rule: Irregular raddoppiamento fonosintattico. Philologie im Netz 2004, 29, 40-59.
• Waltereit R. Metonymischer Bedeutungswandel und pragmatische Strategien: Zur Geschichte von frz. quand même. Metaphorik.de 2004, (6), 117-133.
• Waltereit R. Negation und Frage bei Lucien Tesnière. In: Ágel, V, ed. Dependenz und Valenz. Ein internationales Handbuch zeitgenössischer Forschung. Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter, 2003, pp.139-144.
• Detges U, Waltereit R. Grammaticalization vs. Reanalysis : A Semantic-Pragmatic Account of Functional Change in Grammar. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 2002, 21(2), 151-195.
• Waltereit R. Imperatives, interruption in conversation and the rise of discourse particles: a study of Italian guarda. Linguistics 2002, 40(5), 987-1010.
• Waltereit R. Le rapport dépendanciel entre adjectif et nom: données syntaxiques et structures conceptuelles. Syntaxe et sémantique 2002, 4, 179-194.
• Waltereit R. Verb, Valenz, Satzbaupläne. In: Kolboom, I., Kotschi, T., Reichel, E, ed. Handbuch Französisch. Sprache - Literatur - Kultur - Gesellschaft. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2002, pp.258-265.
• Waltereit Richard. Diminutivi e altre forme di modalizzazione in italiano. In: Wilma Heinrich;Christine Heiss, ed. Modalità e substandard. Bologna: CLUEB, 2001, pp.157-171.
• Waltereit R. Modal particles and their functional equivalents: A speech-act theoretic approach. Journal of Pragmatics 2001, 33(9), 1391-1417.
• Waltereit Richard. What it means to deceive yourself: The semantic relation of French reflexive verbs and their corresponding transitive verbs. In: Frajzyngier, Z; Curl, TS, ed. Reflexives. Form and function. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 2000, pp.257-278.
• Richard Waltereit. Abtönung als universalpragmatisches Phänomen. In: Hans-Otto Spillner;Ingo Warnke, ed. Internationale Tendenzen der Syntaktik, Semantik und Pragmatik. Akten des 32. Linguistischen Kolloquiums in Kassel 1997. Frankfurt: Lang, 1999, pp. 523-530.
• Richard Waltereit. Grammatical constraints on metonymic reference: On the primacy of the direct object. In: Günter Radden;Klaus-Uwe Panther, ed. Metonymy in language and thought. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1999, pp. 233-253.
• Richard Waltereit. Reanalyse als metonymischer Prozeß. In: Jürgen Lang;Ingrid Neumann-Holzschuh, ed. Reanalyse und Grammatikalisierung in den romanischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1999, pp. 19-29.
• Richard Waltereit. Metonymie und Grammatik. Kontiguitätsphänomene in der französischen Satzsemantik. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1998.
• Richard Waltereit. Les cours ils auront déjà commencé. Zur Funktion der Linksversetzung zwischen Informationsstruktur und Referenzsemantik. Romanistisches Jahrbuch 1996, 47, 64-81.
• Andreas Gelz,Markus Krist,Rolf Lohse,Richard Waltereit, ed. Liebe und Logos. Beiträge zum 11. Nachwuchskolloquium der Romanistik. Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1996.
• Richard Waltereit. Zur Diachronie elliptischer Ausdrücke im Französischen. In: Ellen Brandner;Gisella Ferraresi, ed. Language change and generative grammar. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1996, pp. 230-245.
• Richard Waltereit. Zur Semantik französischer Reflexivkonstruktionen. In: Andreas et al Gelz, ed. Liebe und Logos. Beiträge zum 11. Nachwuchskolloquium der Romanistik. Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1996, pp. 45-56.