Dr Dagmar Divjak
BA (KULeuven, Belgium), MA (KULeuven, Belgium), Academic Teacher Training (KULeuven, Belgium), Specialization in Polish Language and Culture (UJ Krakow, Poland), PhD (KULeuven, Belgium)
Senior Lecturer in Slavonic Languages and Linguistics
Contact details
Telephone: +44 (0)114 222 7401
email : d.divjak@sheffield.ac.uk
Biography
After obtaining my PhD in Russian Linguistics from the KULeuven in 2004, I spent one year at the UNC at Chapel Hill (USA, 2004-2005) and one year at the University of Stockholm (Sweden, 2005-2006) as a Postdoctoral Fellow specializing in Slavic Comparative Linguistics.
I joined the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies at the University of Sheffield (UK) in September 2006 as a Lecturer in Slavic Languages and Linguistics and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in September 2010. I am Director of Polish Studies, Director of Learning and Teaching for the Department and Research Ethics Coordinator for the School of Modern Languages.
Research interests
My main research interests are in understanding how our cognitive capacities give rise to the patterns and structures we see in language and in charting what language has to offer the learner in his/her quest for meaning. Because of my background in usage-based cognitive linguistics, frequency in all its guises plays a central role in my work. (For a more detailed description please follow this link).
I sit on the editorial board of Cognitive Linguistics, serve as vice-president/president elect of SCLA, the Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Association, and I am the linguistics stream organizer for BASEES, the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies.
Research students currently supervised
- I am principal supervisor for Robby Vangeel who works on cognitive phono-morphology, focusing on the mutual intelligibility of Russian and Polish.
- I am co-supervising Jane Klavan (Tartu University, Estonia) who works on constructional synonymy using corpus-based and experimental techniques.
Selected recent publications
Monographs
- 2010. Structuring the Lexicon: a Clustered Model for Near-Synonymy. Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin – New York. [Cognitive Linguistics Research 43].
Edited volumes
- 2007. Cognitive Paths into the Slavic Domain. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. [Cognitive Linguistics Research 38]. (together with Agata Kochańska)
Peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters
- 2009. Mapping Between Domains. The Aspect-Modality Interaction in Russian. Russian Linguistics, 33 (3): 249-269.
- 2008. On (in)frequency and (un)acceptability. In Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (ed.). Corpus Linguistics, Computer Tools and Applications - state of the art. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1-21.
- 2008. Clusters in the Mind? Converging evidence from near-synonymy in Russian. The Mental Lexicon, 3 (2): 188-213 (with St. Th. Gries)
- 2006. Ways of Trying in Russian. Clustering Behavioral Profiles. Journal of Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 2 (1): 23-60 (with St. Th. Gries)
- 2006. Ways of Intending: Delineating and Structuring Near-Synonyms. In Gries, St. & Stefanowitsch, A. (eds.) Corpora in cognitive linguistics. Corpus-based Approaches to Syntax and Lexis. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 19-56.
Selected recent conference presentations
- 2010. Pattern transparency and acceptability of low frequent items: evidence from Polish that-clauses. SCLC 11, Providence (USA), 9-11 October 2010.
- 2009. Aspect and modality in Slavic. An exceptional interaction. SALC-2, Stockholm (Sweden), 10-12 June 2009.
- 2008. Modeling aspectual choice in Polish modal constructions. A corpus-based quest for the holy grail? QITL 3, Helsinki (Finland), 2-4 June 2008.
- 2007. Where Do Native Speaker Judgments Come from? The Case of [Vfin Vinf] in Polish. PALC 2007, Łódź (Poland), 19-22 April, 2007.
- 2006. An Experimental Approach to Complex Events in Slavic. Inaugural Meeting of the Slavic Linguistic Society, Bloomington IN (USA), 8-10 September, 2006.
Teaching
Linguistics, in collaboration with Professor Neil Bermel
• RUS 3633 The Russian language and society
• RUS 3622 The Sstructures of Russian: Aspect
• MDL 104 Introduction to Linguistics: Semantics
Russian, in collaboration with Mrs Marianna Ivanova and Mrs Liudmila Nedialkova
• RUS105/106 and 207/208 Post-A-level/Intermediate Russian: grammar
Polish, in collaboration with Ms Anna Socha
- RUS123/124 and RUS 309/310 Polish Language and Culture for Beginners: grammar
- RUS250 Readings in Polish Culture
- RUS350/351 Intermediate Polish: grammar
- RUS383/384 Advanced Polish: grammar
- RUS6570 Directed Reading in Polish Translation and Contrastive Analysis