Professor Richard Coates
Professor of Linguistics (in European contexts also using the title Professor of Onomastics)
BA (Hons) Modern and Medieval Languages [French, German and Linguistics], Cambridge
MA, PhD [Linguistics], Cambridge
FSA, FRSA
Room: 5E26
Telephone: +44 (0)117 328 3278
Email: Richard.Coates@uwe.ac.uk
Research
Much of my research is about proper names, especially the origin of place-names in England. (I am Hon. Director of the Survey of English Place-Names, which is supported by the AHRC and the British Academy, and I am the Survey’s Editor for Hampshire.) I am also interested in the linguistic theory of names and naming practices (including personal names). My other interests include general historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and traditional dialectology; the historical relationships among the languages of the British Isles; the philology of Western and Northern European languages; morphology and phonology; first-language interference in second-language learning, esp. prosody; Channel Islands French; local history; poetry and translation.
Doctoral supervision
I am very keen to receive enquiries from potential PhD candidates in any of the above-mentioned areas. I currently supervise on place-names and personal names, linguistic borrowing, changes in the terminology of abusive language, Yoruba interference in Nigerian English, conversational exchanges in chat-shows, and aspects of the dialect and accent of Bristol.
Teaching
My UWE undergraduate teaching at the moment is in introductory semantics and pragmatics, and a final-year course on the history of the English language and the relation of linguistic change to cultural change.
Other roles
Apart from the roles mentioned above, I am editor of the Journal of the English Place-Name Society and chair of the editorial board of Onoma. I was from 2002-8 Secretary of the International Council of Onomastic Sciences, an organization devoted to the promotion of the study of names (see www.icosweb.net). I was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sussex from 1991 to 2006.
Selected major and recent publications
Books:
The place-names of Hampshire. London: Batsford (1989).
The ancient and modern names of the Channel Islands: a linguistic history. Stamford: Paul Watkins (1991).
Word structure. London: Routledge (1999) [a student workbook].
(with Andrew Breeze) Celtic voices, English places. Stamford: Shaun Tyas, (2000).
A guide to the dialect of Sussex. (Publication pending.)
Articles:
Morphophonemics. In Keith Brown (ed.) Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, second edn, available in print and online. Oxford: Elsevier (2005).
Verulamium: the Romano-British name of St Albans. Studia Celtica 39 (2005), 169-76.
Four pre-English river-names in and around Fenland: Chater, Granta, Nene and Welland. Transactions of the Philological Society 103 (2005), 303-22.
Properhood. Language 82 (2006), 356-82.
Maiden Castle, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Hārūn al-Rashīd. Nomina 29 (2006), 5-60.
(with R.L. Trask) A new early source of Basque: the Willughby glossary of 1664. Transactions of the Philological Society 104 (2006), 331-93.
Yell. Journal of the Scottish Name Society 1 (2007), 1-12.
The genealogy of eagre ‘tidal surge in the river Trent’. English Language and Linguistics 11.3 (2007), 507-23.
Azure Mouse, Bloater Hill, Goose Puddings, and One Land called the Cow: continuity and conundrums in Lincolnshire minor names. Journal of the English Place-Name Society 39 (2007), 73-143.
A linguist’s angle on the Star of Bethlehem. Astronomy and Geophysics 49.5 (October 2008), 5.27-5.32.
Reflections on some Lincolnshire major place-names, part 1: Algarkirk to Melton Ross. Journal of the English Place-Name Society 40, 35-95. [Part 2 to appear in Journal 41 (2009).]
A strictly Millian approach to the definition of the proper name. Mind and Language (forthcoming).
Chapters:
The significances of Celtic place-names in England. In Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola and Heli Pitkänen (eds) The Celtic roots of English. Joensuu: University of Joensuu, Studies in Languages 37, (2002), 47-86.
The grammar of place-names in Scandinavian England: a preliminary commentary. In Peder Gammeltoft, Carole A. Hough and Doreen J. Waugh (eds) Cultural contacts in the North Atlantic region: the evidence of names, 72-82. (Proceedings of a conference at Lerwick, Shetland (2003).)
Names. In Richard Hogg and David Denison (eds), A history of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2006, pbk 2008), 312-51.
Invisible Britons: the view from linguistics. In N.J. Higham (ed.) Britons in Anglo-Saxon England. Manchester: Manchester University Press (2007), 172-91.
Invisible Britons: the view from toponomastics. In George Broderick and Paul Cavill, eds, Language contact in the place-names of Britain and Ireland. Nottingham: English Place-Name Society (2007), 41-53.
Three new elements in the minor toponymy of western Lindsey, Lincolnshire. In O.J. Padel and D.N. Parsons, eds, A commodity of good names: essays in honour of Margaret Gelling.Donington, Lincolnshire: Shaun Tyas (2008), 259-69.
Web-resources:
E-book:
The place-names of Hayling Island, Hampshire.
Interactive database:
(with Seongsook Choi) Names in Shakespeare online.
