Research
My work is mainly situated within historical linguistics, with a focus on English and Scots in the Early Modern period.
I have parsed a corpus of Scots correspondence from 1540-1750 (the Parsed Corpus of Scottish Correspondence), and have a keen interest in methods involving building and using parsed corpora. My wider research interests involve syntactic variation and change, historical sociolinguistics, and language contact.
The specific topics I've investigated can be found below.
I do research on Scots which is the name of a minority language traditionally spoken in Lowland Scotland and the Northern Isles. Follow the link from this heading to learn more!
Despite that I study the history of Scots, I often take part in events to do with the use of Scots in Scotland today, as I think it's crucial that researchers interact with the Scots-speaking community to learn where our research can have impact.
Recent engagement
Scots@Ed (organiser, 2020)
the Future of Scots Symposium (participant, 2023)
Topics investigated, with related outputs/projects:
The development of do-support in English and Scots
Publications
Gotthard, L. (2024). Subject-Verb agreement and the rise of do-support during the period of anglicisation of Scots. In L. Caon, M. Gordon, and T. Porck (eds.) Keys to the History of English: Diachronic Linguistic Change, Morpho-Syntax and Lexicography, 53-79. John Benjamins. Preprint. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.363.03got
Working paper for this study published as:
Gotthard, L. (2021). Variation in Subject-Verb Agreement in the History of Scots. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 27: Iss. 1, Article 9. Available here.
Gotthard, L. (2019). Why do-support in Scots is different, English Studies 100(3). 1–25. Available here.
Conference presentations
the 21st International Conference for English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL21), Universiteit Leiden, June 2021.
"Subject-Verb agreement and the rise of do-support during the period of anglicisation of Scots"the 26th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL26), Universität Heidelberg, Sep 2023.
"The rise of do-support during Scots anglicisation: Insights from the Parsed Corpus of Scottish Correspondence" (Abstract)
Current/Upcoming
"The rise Scots do – transfer or innovation?" – R&R with English Language and Linguistics
Variation in Subject-Verb agreement in Early Modern Scots (the Northern Subject Rule and beyond)
Publications
Gotthard, L. (2024). Subject-Verb agreement and the rise of do-support during the period of anglicisation of Scots. In L. Caon, M. Gordon, and T. Porck (eds.) Keys to the History of English: Diachronic Linguistic Change, Morpho-Syntax and Lexicography, 53-79. John Benjamins. Preprint. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.363.03got
Working paper for this study published as:
Gotthard, L. (2021). Variation in Subject-Verb Agreement in the History of Scots. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 27: Iss. 1, Article 9. Available here.
Conference presentations
Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ulster 13 (FRLSU13), LMU Munich (online), Oct 2021.
"The Scots Northern Subject Rule in contact." (Abstract)the 21st International Conference for English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL21), Universiteit Leiden, June 2021.
"Subject-Verb agreement and the rise of do-support during the period of anglicisation of Scots"the 24th Diachronic Generative Syntax conference (DiGS 24), Université Paris Cité, July 2023.
With Joel C. Wallenberg (University of York):
"Three-way grammar competition during the Scots anglicisation: Insights from the Parsed Corpus of Scottish Correspondence." (Abstract, slides)
Current/Upcoming
Submission in prep: L. Gotthard & J.C. Wallenberg. "Three-way grammar competition during the Scots anglicisation: Insights from the Parsed Corpus of Scottish Correspondence".
Non-finite complementation in the history of English
Since February 2022, I am working with Prof. George Walkden (PI) and Dr. Sirri Mjöll Björnsdóttir on the project 'Modelling lexical diffusion in syntax: non-finite complementation in Modern English', under the research unit SILPAC. I spent 4 weeks at Uni Konstanz working on this project, from 17 Oct to 14 Nov 2022.
Conference presentations
Pilot study results were presented as a poster at DiGS23:
Björnsdóttir, S., L. Gotthard, C. Riegger, G. Walkden. "Raising out of control".Presentation given at ICHL26:
Björnsdóttir, S., L. Gotthard, C. Riegger, G. Walkden. "The rise of raising in Early Modern English".
Current/Upcoming
Submission in prep: Björnsdóttir, S., L. Gotthard, G. Walkden. "The rise of raising in the history of English".
Scots lexis in 18th-19th century print
In 2020, Dr Sarah van Eyndhoven and I successfully submitted a project for the Centre for Data, Culture & Society (CDCS) Text Mining Lab. This led to a collaborative project with the CDCS and National Library of Scotland (NLS), to study the use of Scots and English lexis in print by using the text-mining facility defoe on the NLS chapbooks collection.
This project has the following outputs:
Filgueira, R., C. Grover, V. Karaiskos, B. Alex, S. van Eyndhoven, L. Gotthard, and M. Terras. (2021). Extending defoe for the efficient analysis of historical texts at scale. 2021 IEEE 17th International Conference on eScience (eScience), 21-29, doi: 10.1109/eScience51609.2021.00012.
Available here.van Eyndhoven, S., L. Gotthard, and R. Filgueira. ‘Scots for the masses’? Exploring the use of Scots in 19th century chapbooks.
Presented at the 6th International Society for the Linguistics of English conference (ISLE6), University of Eastern Finland (online), June 2021
Paper accepted, and revisions submitted for approval, for the ISLE6 proceedings volume: ‘Scots for the masses’? Exploring the use of Scots in Late Modern print'.
Language contact
As the majority of my work focuses on syntactic change during intense contact between Scots and English, I have a general interest for all things language contact. I am particularly interested in how to determine what syntactic changes are due to parallell developments and what are due to contact, and also what role sociolinguistic factors have in the outcomes of grammar competition and change.
Although there is no specific output which deals with this question alone, most of the work on Scots listed here explore contact as a possible explanatory model for the changes under investigation.
Outputs related to working with the PCSC data
Plenary talk: Filling gaps: Building a parsed corpus of Older Scots correspondence.
Undergraduate Linguistics Association of Britain (ULAB) conference, University of Edinburgh, 9 April 2022Roundtable Discussion: New Approaches to the Study of Scottish Historical Correspondence
16th International Conference of the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE-16), Mainz, 1 September 2022
Convened by Dr. Christine Elsweiler (LMU Munich) and Prof. Marina Dossena (Uni Bergamo), with other panel members Dr Sarah van Eyndhoven and Dr. Mo Gordon.The same panel discussion was held as an online session at the ISLE 7 conference (University of Queensland, 19 June 2023)
Conference talk: Anglicisation as standardisation – Insights from patterns of syntactic change in the Parsed Corpus of Scottish Correspondence (Abstract)
Presented at the ICEHL22 (Sheffield, 3 July 2023) workshop Interactions with the Standard in Early and Late Modern Regional Varieties of English"Lightning talk" accepted for pre-conference workshop Legacy of the Penn historical corpora, at DiGS 25, Mannheim. Abstract.
PhD research
My PhD thesis, available in full here, describes the construction of the Parsed Corpus of Scottish Correspondence (PCSC; ch3), presents three case studies on the PCSC data (ch 4-6), and assesses the likelihood of syntactic changes in Early Modern Scots being outcomes of influence from English (ch2, ch7).
My supervisors were Prof. Bettelou Los and Prof. Rob Truswell, and I received external supervision from Dr. Rhona Alcorn (Dictionaries of the Scots Language) and Dr. Beatrice Santorini (University of Pennsylvania).
Part of my PhD studies were carried out while on a research visit to the University of Pennsylvania, from February to July 2020.
I successfully defended my thesis in October 2022, and received my award in December 2022.
The examination panel consisted of:
Prof. Caroline Heycock (University of Edinburgh)
Prof. Joanna Kopaczyk (University of Glasgow)
Dr. Joel C. Wallenberg (University of York)