Terttu Nevalainen (born 31 May 1952, Vuolijoki) is a Finnish

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

and the current Chair of English Philology at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

. She has been a member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences since 2001 and was inducted as a First Class Knight of the Order of the White Rose of Finland in 2015. Nevalainen works on

corpus linguistics Corpus linguistics is an empirical method for the study of language by way of a text corpus (plural ''corpora''). Corpora are balanced, often stratified collections of authentic, "real world", text of speech or writing that aim to represent a giv ...

, the

history of English English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands. The Anglo- ...

and historical sociolinguistics.

Background and career

Nevalainen received a B.A. in English philology and general linguistics at the University of Helsinki in 1977, before going to

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

for postgraduate studies from 1980 to 1981. She then completed her Ph.L (1986) and Ph.D. (1991) at the University of Helsinki. She has since been a visiting scholar at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

and

University of Sheffield The University of Sheffield (informally Sheffield University or TUOS) is a public university, public research university in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Its history traces back to the foundation of Sheffield Medical School in 1828, Fir ...

. Nevalainen is currently editor-in-chief of the monograph series ''Oxford Studies in the History of English'' and co-editor of the ''Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics''

journal A journal, from the Old French ''journal'' (meaning "daily"), may refer to: *Bullet journal, a method of personal organization *Diary, a record of personal secretive thoughts and as open book to personal therapy or used to feel connected to onesel ...

. She is also currently building an open-access Language Change Database to facilitate statistical modelling and comparative sociolinguistic typologies. Since 1993, she has been leading the compilation of the Corpora of Early English Correspondence, which currently comprises 5.1 million words of Late Middle and

Early Modern English Early Modern English (sometimes abbreviated EModEFor example, or EMnE) or Early New English (ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transit ...

from 1400 to 1800. In 2002, a ''

Festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

'' entitled ''Variation Past and Present (Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique LXI)'', was complied in her honor by Raumolin-Brunberg, H. et al.

Notable publications

* Nevalainen, T. (2006) ''An Introduction to Early Modern English.'' Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. * Nevalainen, T. (ed.) & Traugott, E. (ed.) (2012) ''The Oxford Handbook of the History of English''. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. (Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics) * Nevalainen, T. & Raumolin-Brunberg, H. (2017) ''Historical sociolinguistics: Language change in Tudor and Stuart England''. January 2017 (2nd rev. ed.) London: Routledge - Taylor & Francis Group.

References

External links

Terttu Nevalainen
University of Helsinki
Language Change Database

Corpora of Early English Correspondence (CEEC)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nevalainen, Terttu 1952 births Living people Linguists from Finland Academic staff of the University of Helsinki University of Helsinki alumni Women linguists Academics of the University of Sheffield