Professor Neil Bermel
BA (Yale), MA, PhD (Berkeley)
School of Languages, Arts and Societies
Professor of Russian and Slavonic Studies
+44 114 222 7405
Full contact details
School of Languages, Arts and Societies
2.40
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
- Profile
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A native of New York, I studied Russian at school and university, and picked up Czech in graduate school as a secondary interest that has gradually become my primary one.
I came to Sheffield in 1996 as lecturer in Czech language and linguistics and after some years found myself as Head of Russian and Slavonic Studies (2007-2009, 2016-17) and Head of the School of Languages and Cultures (2009-2014).
Having served a term as Director of Admissions for the School, I am now taking a turn as its Director of Research.
When not engaged in weighty academic pursuits, I can often be found taking long but not overly strenuous walks through Sheffield or the Derbyshire countryside.
- Research interests
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My research has centred on variation in grammar and form in Czech and Russian, but has extended into other areas of language culture, including language regulation and planning and management of multilingual interactions. Currently it has four major strands:
- Methods of evaluating variation in language, including the use of questionnaires, tests and corpora (for more information about current work see our major AHRC-sponsored project Feast and Famine, involving collaborators at seven partner universities; for previous work on this see our Leverhulme Trust funded project);
- Processes of formal and informal regulation of language. I am particularly interested in the intersection between language usage and language regulation;
- Linguistic landscapes and language management at Czech heritage sites, which incorporates work with student researchers and translators, and impact work with partners in the Czech Republic (for more information see the ).
- Translation of contemporary Czech literature: I have translated two novels by the Czech author Pavel Kohout, a volume of short stories by Daniela Fischerov獺, and Helga's Diary, an autobiographical account by Holocaust survivor Helga Weiss.
- Publications
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Books
- . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.KG.
- Linguistic Authority, Language Ideology, and Metaphor: The Czech Orthography Wars. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Register variation and language standards in Czech.
- Context and the Lexicon in the Development of Russian Aspect. Univ of California Press.
Edited books
- . Germany: Walter de Gruyter.
Journal articles
- . Word Structure, 16(2-3), 147-153.
- . Word Structure, 16(2-3), 206-232.
- . Cognitive Linguistics.
- . Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 14(2).
- . Russian Linguistics, 39(3), 275-282.
- . Russian Linguistics, 39(3), 283-308.
- From standard to norm through the lens of corpora and native speakers. Prace Filologiczne(LXVII), 21-43.
- IN THE WORKS OF ENGLISH?. SLOVO A SLOVESNOST, 76(3), 238-240.
- English at work: A report from the conference "English in Business and Commerce: Interactions and Policies", Prague, March 2223, 2014. Slovo a Slovesnost, 76(3), 238-240.
- Absolutn穩 a proporcion獺ln穩 frekvence v NK ve svtle v羸zkumu morfosyntaktick矇 variace v e禳tin. Na禳e e, 97(4-5), 216-227.
- . Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 8.2, 241-276.
- . Russian Linguistics, 36(1), 91-119.
- On the alleged Czech diglossia in the contemporary world. Slovo a Slovesnost, 71(1), 5-30.
- O tzv. esk矇 diglosii v souasn矇m svt. Slovo a Slovesnost, 71(1), 5-30.
- . BMJ (Online), 339(7735), 1420.
- Auto-appendectomy in the Antarctic: case report.. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 339.
- Pravidla jako cukr nebo bi? Pravopis v esk矇m n獺rodn穩m korpusu. Na禳e e, 91(1-2), 1-12.
- Pravidla jako cukr nebo bi? Pravopis v esk矇m n獺rodn穩m korpusu: 1. 獺st. Na禳e e, 91(1), 1-12.
- Pravidla jako cukr nebo bi? Pravopis v esk矇m n獺rodn穩m korpusu: 2. 獺st. Na禳e e, 91(2), 57-67.
- 'Celestial Harmonies'. NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, 13-13.
- . World Literature Today, 77(1), 149-149.
- The Czech language: Foundations of the language structure, past and present. SLAVONIC AND EAST EUROPEAN REVIEW, 81(1), 99-100.
- . The Slavic and East European Journal, 47(1), 152-152.
- . The Slavic and East European Journal, 46(3), 613-613.
- 'Two Murders in My Double Life'. NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, 37-37.
- 'City Sister Silver'. NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, 24-24.
- . Slavic Review, 60(3), 615-616.
- St穩d獺n穩 k籀du 'i m穩禳en穩 jazykov羸ch prostdku'? K popisu dialogu v esk矇 beletrii. Na禳e e, 84(1), 16-30.
- . The Slavic and East European Journal, 44(2), 354-354.
- . Translation Review, 55(1), 6-11.
- A geography of case semantics: The Czech dative and the Russian instrumental. Russian Linguistics, 22(1), 131-136.
- . Russian Linguistics, 19(3), 333-348.
- . Cognitive Linguistics, 0(0).
- . Cognitive Linguistics, 0(0).
- Trajectories of Change in Paradigmatic Cells in Czech. Na禳e e.
- Uncertainty in the production of Czech noun and verb forms. Word Structure.
Chapters
- , LANGUAGES AND NATIONALISM INSTEAD OF EMPIRES (pp. 114-139).
- , Languages and Nationalism Instead of Empires (pp. 114-139). Routledge
- In Sherman T & Nekvapil J (Ed.), English in Business and Commerce (pp. 194-228). De Gruyter Mouton
- Still on the brink: the productivity of Czech nominative plural desinences In Makarova A, Dickey S & Divjak D (Ed.), Each Venture a New Beginning Studies in Honor of Laura A. Janda (pp. 193-210). Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers.
- , Divided Languages? (pp. 21-37). Springer International Publishing
- Springer International Publishing
- Frequency and oppositions in corpus-based research into morphological variation In Konopka M, Kubczak J, Mair C, Sticha F & Wassner U (Ed.), Grammatik und Korpora 2009 (pp. 373-388). BoD Books on Demand
Conference proceedings papers
- . Taming the Corpus: From inflection and lexis to interpretation, 8 April 2016 - 9 April 2016.
- . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.KG.
- Research group
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Jonathan Israel Escobar Farf獺n, A Corpus-based Study of Nahuatl Contemporary Writing: Investigating a Continuum for Language Planning, awaiting viva
Fadhel Shalal, The Russian suffix -k(a): Between Inflection and Derivation, completed 2018
Dario Lei, Competing Forms in the Croatian Inflection System, completed 2017
Teresa Wigglesworth-Baker, Language Policy and Russian-titular Bilingualism in Post-Soviet Tatarstan, completed 2015
Marie Sanders, Changes in Czech Vocabulary Against the Background of Socio-political Changes from the 1980s to the Present, completed 2009
James Wilson, Moravians in Prague: A Sociolinguistic Study of Dialect Accommodation in the Czech Republic, completed 2007I am interested in supervising postgraduate research on:
Topics relating to the morphology of Slavonic languages, especially involving the use of corpora or experiments with a usage-based focus;
Language culture, language regulation/planning and written languages, both in Slavonic and more broadly; and
Literary translation, with a focus on the Slavonic world
- Teaching interests
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I maintain an active interest in language teaching methods and practices:
- Co-author Ilona Ko獺nov獺 and I created the and , which is an extensive and comprehensive B1-level course in the Czech language oriented around a communicative core (rather than purely focused on grammar topics).
- An ongoing project on , conceived and carried out with Ludk Knittl, has involved students in translation and in research into multilingualism.
- Together with primary author Ludk Knittl, I played a role in designing our final year and our internal History of the Czech Lands website and course.
- I have also led on internal initiatives to examine our interface with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and to map the scope of projects and teaching within the school with a community and external engagement dimension.
- Teaching activities
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- Beginners Russian
- Intermediate Russian
- Advanced Russian Translation
- Beginners Czech
- Intermediate Czech
- Advanced Czech Translation
- Russian Linguistics
- Linguistics for Students of Modern Languages
- Professional activities and memberships
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External institutional reviews and advisory boards:
&紳莉莽梯;, Advisory Board member, 2017-2020
&紳莉莽梯;, Advisory Board member, 2016-2019, and AB chair, 2016-2017
&紳莉莽梯;, Panel 12 Institutional review of institutes of language and literature, 2015, panel member and report co-ordinator for a panel institute
Czech National Corpus Institute, Institutional review, external assessor, 2013
Czech Academy of Sciences, , Institutional review, panel member, 2010Editorship:
Associate Editor of the , 2016-
Membership of editorial boards:
&紳莉莽梯;, 2013-.
&紳莉莽梯; [A Czech journal of corpus linguistics, published by the Czech Language Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences], 2010-
&紳莉莽梯;, 2008-.
&紳莉莽梯; [a journal of general linguistics, published by the Linguistics Association of the Czech Republic], 2006-.
&紳莉莽梯; [Czech linguistics, published by the Czech Language Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences, 2009-.
&紳莉莽梯; [literature, language and translation studies, Department of Czech Literature, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Charles 窪蹋勛圖厙, Prague], 2004-.
&紳莉莽梯; [language of quasi-native speaker learners, e-journal, 窪蹋勛圖厙 of California, Los Angeles], 2003-.
&紳莉莽梯; [literary and linguistic studies, Opole, Poland], 2001-.External examining of PhD theses:
Charles 窪蹋勛圖厙, Prague, PhD (Mathematical Linguistics), 2018
Charles 窪蹋勛圖厙, Prague, PhD (Czech Language), 2017
Charles 窪蹋勛圖厙, Prague, PhD (Corpus Linguistics), 2015
窪蹋勛圖厙 of Newcastle, PhD (Creative Writing/Literature), 2014
窪蹋勛圖厙 of Leeds, PhD (Slavic/Applied Linguistics/Computing), 2013
窪蹋勛圖厙 of Surrey, PhD (Polish/Linguistics), 2014-15
窪蹋勛圖厙 of Oxford, confirmation of PhD status (Russian Linguistics), 2003
Trinity College, Dublin, PhD (Translation), 2002External examining of taught courses:
窪蹋勛圖厙 of Bristol, BA/MA (Czech studies), 2015-2019
窪蹋勛圖厙 of Durham, BA Russian Studies, 2009-2013
窪蹋勛圖厙 of Oxford, MPhil (Slavonic Studies), 2002, 2008-2009; BA (Czech with Slovak), 2001-2003
窪蹋勛圖厙 of Surrey, BA courses in Russian, 2006-2010
窪蹋勛圖厙 of Glasgow, BA/MA (courses and modules in Czech and Central European studies), 2003-2007