Herbert Schendl

Herbert Schendl c. 2015

Herbert Schendl (Ph.D. 1971 U Vienna, "Habil" 1985 U Vienna, "ao. Prof 1986", o.Prof. 1992 U Vienna) is professor and chair emeritus for English historical linguistics at the Department of English at the University of Vienna. He has been the third "Luick"-Chair and major proponent of the Vienna School of English Historical Linguisitics (an honour that has since Schendl's retirement in 2007 been held by Nikolaus Ritt as the fourth such chair).

Schendl's work spans from Old English to Late Modern English and has built a reputation for incorporating sociohistorical approaches, e.g. Schendl (1996, 1997, 2012). Presently, Schendl is teaching courses on Old English at the Vienna Department.

Prof. Schendl is perhaps most widely known as an innovator in the area of historical code-switching, an area he helped found and brought to prominence from the mid-1990s. His most popular monograph is his introductory book Historical Linguistics, which appeared in 2001 in Oxford University Press' series Oxford Introductions to Language Studies, edited by H. G. Widdowson, and has been translated into a number of languages, including Chinese.

Education

Herbert Schendl grew up in Upper Austria (see Herbert Penzl for another internationally known linguist from a province that is otherwise not known for its humanities scholars) and studied English and French literature and linguistics at the University of Vienna, teacher's degree. In 1971-74 he worked as an assistant professor at what is now the Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, before, in 1974, returning to his alma mater department as assistant professor. His "second book" (Habilitation) followed in 1985 on verb valency in Old English, followed by professorial positions in Vienna and, in 1992, a call as Full Professor to the University of Munich, which he declined. Consequently, he became Ordinarius at the University of Vienna.

Academic philosophy and record

With an administrative record that is as distinguished as his research record, e.g. as member of the University Board of Governors (in AutG "Senat"), as the Dean's Committee chair or as a member of the university-wide Arbitration Committee, Schendl has built a reputation as a scholar with university-political talents that he has used to further strengthen the position of English and English Linguistics at U Vienna. His efforts have been widely recognized by his peers, e.g. in a 2007 festschrift on the occasion of his 65th birthday with Braumüller, or a 2012 international conference, including Peter Trudgill and Hans Goebl, on the occasion of his 70th birthday Herbert Schendl's focus on excellence in teaching (see, e.g. notable students below), has contributed to furthering the international reputation of the U Vienna Department of English, which employs renowned linguists, beyond those mentioned, such as Barbara Seidlhofer, H. G. Widdowson, G. Kaltenboeck, Evelin Keizer and the late Dieter Kastovsky.

Austrian Studies in English

Herbert Schendl has been editor of Austrian Studies in English (ASE), currently with Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Gabriella Mazzon. ASE is a book series originally founded in 1895 as Wiener Beiträge zur englischen Philologie and is one of the long-running academic publication series in the world. Austrian Studies has been a major vehicle of publication for the Vienna School, publishing works by Jakob Schipper (1895), Karl Luick (1903), or Herbert Koziol (1967). Jakob Schipper, as the founding professor of the Vienna English department in 1877, was also the series' first main editor. Over 105 volumes have appeared in the series, which is published with Peter Lang since about 2015.

Select Publications

Note: some publications are available in full-text format at https://univie.academia.edu/HerbertSchendl

Coelsch-Foisner, Sabine and Herbert Schendl (eds.) 2016. Contact and Conflict in English studies. (Austrian Studies in English, 104). Frankfurt: P. Lang (co-ed. S. Coelsch-Foisner)

Herbert Schendl, Manfred Markus and Sabine Coelsch-Foisner (eds.). 2012. Transfer in English Studies. (Austrian Studies in English, 100) Vienna: Braumüller.

Schendl, Herbert. 2012. Middle English: language contact. Bergs, Alex and Laurel Brinton (eds.) Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.1), 505-519. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Schendl, Herbert and Laura Wright (eds.) 2011. Code-switching in  early English. (Topics in English linguistics, 76) Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.

Schendl, Herbert. 2002. Mixed language texts as data and evidence in English historical linguistics. In Studies in the History of English: A Millennial Perspective. Eds. Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell, 51-78. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Schendl, Herbert and Nikolaus Ritt. 2002. Of vowel shifts, great, small, long and short. Language Sciences 24: 409-421.

Schendl, Herbert. 2001. Historical linguistics (Oxford Introductions to Language Study). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Schendl, Herbert. 2000. Linguistic aspects of code-switching in medieval English texts. In Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain, ed. D. A. Trotter, 77-92. D.S. Brewer.

Schendl, Herbert. 1997. 'To London fro Kent / Sunt predia depopulantes': Code-switching and medieval English macaronic poems. Vienna English Working Papers (VIEWS) 6: 52-66.

Schendl, Herbert. 1996. The 3rd plural present indicative in Early Modern English - variation and linguistic contact. In: D. Britton (ed.), English historical linguistics 1994. Papers from the 8th international conference on English historical linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 143-160.

Schendl, Herbert. 1992. A valency description of Old English possessive verbs. In: M. Rissanen et al. (eds.), History of Englishes: new methods and interpretations in historical linguistics. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 418-436.

Schendl, Herbert & Harald Mittermann. 1986. A complete concordance to the novels of John Lyly (The Elizabethan Concordance Series 2). Hildesheim: G. Olms.

Schendl, Herbert. 1985. Untersuchungen zur Valenz altenglischer Verba. Unpubl. Habilitationsschrift, University of Vienna. (Abstract in: English and American Studies in German 1988, Tübingen 1989, 20-22).

Schendl, Herbert. 1971. Zur Syntax der Subordination in Thomas Nashes 'The Unfortunate Traveller’ und Thomas Deloneys 'Jack of Newbury’. Unpubl. Ph. D. University of Vienna.

Notable students

Anita Auer (linguist, Switzerland)

Stefan Dollinger (linguist, Canada)

Eva Duran Eppler (linguist, UK)

Julia Hüttner (linguist, UK)

Gunther Kaltenböck (linguist, Austria)

Christian Liebl (Phonogrammarchiv, Austria)

Ursula Lutzky (linguist, Austria)

Hans Platzer (linguist, Austria)

Ute Smit (linguist, Austria)