Benjamín Molineaux

Benjamín Molineaux

Lecturer in Linguistics

The University of Edinburgh

About me

I have been a member of The University of Edinburgh’s Linguistics and English Language Department since 2014, first as a postoctoral fellow and, as of April 2021, as Lecturer.

My research is mostly within the scope of the Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics (AMC). I work on the historical phonology and morphology of Mapudungun, the ancestral language of the Mapuche people of south-central Chile and Argentina, as well as on the early sounds and spellings of the Scots language. I also have an interest in the languages of the Americas more broadly and their contribution to linguistic diversity and linguistic theory.

I recently completed a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship entitled “Digital methods in New-World language change: Words & sounds in older Mapudungun”. The project allowed me to build and mine the first stages of the Corpus of Historical Mapudungun. I am also a member of the From Inglis to Scots (FITS) project, which is charged with creating a corpus of grapho-phonological correspondences for some of the earliest Scots documents.

Originally from Santiago, Chile, I began my work life as a secondary-school Philosophy and English teacher, both on the southern island of Chiloé, and in New York City state schools. At times, I’ve also worked in adult education and HR consultancy in Santiago and as a freelance pronunciations editor for the Oxford English Dictionary.

Download my CV (in English) / Descargue mi CV (en Español)

Interests
  • Historical Phonology
  • Morphology and Stress Typology
  • Mapudungun
  • Languages of the Americas
  • Older Scots
  • Missionary grammars
Education
  • DPhil in Linguistics and Philology, 2014

    The University of Oxford

  • MPhil in Linguistics and Philology, 2010

    The University of Oxford

  • MSc in Education/TESOL, 2008

    City University of New York

Recent Publications

(2023). A grapho-phonologically parsed corpus of medieval Scots: Variation across time. In Corpora.

PDF Project Source Document

(2022). English Historical Linguistics: Historical English in contact. Published by John Benjamins.

Source Document

(2021). Phonotactics, graphotactics and contrast: The history of Scots dental fricative spellings. In ELL.

PDF Project Source Document

(2020). Visualising pre-standard spelling practice: Understanding the interchange of ⟨ch(t)⟩ and ⟨th(t)⟩ in Older Scots. In JDMDH.

PDF Project Source Document

(2019). Charting the rise and demise of a phonotactically motivated change in Scots. In Folia Linguistica Historica.

PDF Project Source Document

(2019). Historical Dialectology in the Digital Age. Published by EUP.

Source Document

(2019). Early spelling evidence for Scots L-vocalisation: a corpus-based approach. In Historical Dialectology in the Digital Age.

Project Source Document

(2018). Towards a grapho-phonologically parsed corpus of medieval Scots: Database design and technical solutions. In Corpora.

PDF Project Source Document

(2017). The emergence of Scots: Clues from Germanic *a reflexes. In proceedings of FRLSU.

PDF Project Source Document

Projects

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Corpus of Historical Mapudungun

Corpus of Historical Mapudungun

My recently-completed Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (Apr. 2018–Mar. 2021) created version 1.0 of a linguistically tagged corpus of the earliest attestations of written Mapudungun.

From Inglis to Scots (FITS)

From Inglis to Scots (FITS)

Mapping sounds to spellings. (An AHRC project at the University of Edinburgh’s Angus McIntosh Centre)

Teaching

In previous years, I have been involved in the teaching of the following English Language and Linguistics courses here at Edinburgh:

In the 2023-2024 academic year, I will be teaching on the following courses:

Contact

  • benjamin.molineaux@ed.ac.uk
  • Dugald Stewart Building, Edinburgh, Scotland EH8 9AD
  • Room 1.10
  • Office hours: Thursdays 11:10am (during term time)