Kate Burridge

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Kate Burridge is a prominent Australian linguist specialising in the Germanic languages. Burridge currently occupies the Chair of Linguistics in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University.^[1]

Burridge completed her undergraduate training in Linguistics and German at the University of Western Australia. This was followed by three years postgraduate study at the University of London. Kate completed her PhD in 1983 on syntactic change in medieval Dutch.^[2] She also taught at the Polytechnic of Central London before joining the Department of Linguistics at La Trobe University in 1984. In February 2003 she took up the Chair of Linguistics in the Linguistics Program in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University.^[3]^[4]

Burridge's work has mainly focused on Pennsylvania German-speaking communities in the United States, grammatical change in Germanic languages, the nature of euphemism and dysphemism, linguistic taboo, and on English grammatical structure in general. She is currently co-editor of the Australian Journal of Linguistics.^[5]

Burridge is a regular presenter of language segments on ABC Radio. She appears weekly as a panellist on ABC TV's Can We Help?, ^[6]^[7] and has also appeared on The Einstein Factor.

She plays the hurdy-gurdy with the medieval music group, Carnevale,^[8] and does readings of Old English.

[edit] Publications

"A Localized Study of Pennsylvania German Dialect in Waterloo County, Ontario" (1989, The Pennsylvania Folklore Society of Ontario)

"Euphemism and Dysphemism: Language Used as Shield and Weapon" (1991, Oxford Uni Press) - co-authored with Keith Allan.

"Diachronic Studies on the Languages of the Anabaptists" (1992, Universittsverlag Brockmeyer) - co-edited with Werner Enninger

"Syntactic Change in Germanic" (1993, John Benjamins)

"Canada - Australia: Towards a Centenary of Partnership" (1997, Carlton Uni Press) - co-edited with Lois Foster and Gerry Turcotte

"English in Australia and New Zealand - An Introduction to its Structure, History and Use" (1998, Oxford Uni Press) - co-authored with Jean Mulder

"Introducing English Grammar" (2000, Edward Arnold) - co-authored with Kersti Brjars

"Blooming English: Observations on the roots, cultivation and hybrids of the English Language" (2004, Cambridge University Press; published 2002 by ABC Books)

"Weeds in the Garden of Words: further observations on the tangled history of the English language" (2005, Cambridge University Press; published 2004 by ABC Books)