CURRENT Projects

I am currently working on corpus analyses regarding the use of passive constructions in media reports of femicide. See below for a recent talk on a case study on UK newspapers 1985-2021.

On the Integration of Scandinavian Loan Verbs into Medieval English

My dissertational research „On the Integration of Scandinavian Loan Verbs into Medieval English“ focuses on the argument structural impact of Old Norse on the English verb system during and after linguistic contact. 

In this project I investigate the changes to the argument structure of Old Norse verbal loans, their native and copied near-synonyms and the English verb classes effected by the integration of these loans into English between the 8th and 15th century using historical corpora of Old and Middle English and Early Icelandic for both diachronic and synchronic crosslinguistic comparisons of argument realization. 

In the context of this work I also delineate factors of close genealogical and linguistic relationships between languages in contact which are especially relevant to this contact situation and its effect on the structural changes in the verbal system such as mutual intelligibility and cognate sets.

I am grateful to the Evangelische Studienwerk e.V. for the financial and ideational support of my doctoral research between February 2020 and July 2022.

• 08/2025: University of Mannheim (Germany) - The Passive Voice and Men’s Violence against Women – a case study on UK news reports of femicide

• 08/2025: Presentation given regarding the inaugural doctoral dissertation, University of Mannheim (Germany) - Four Learnings Regarding the Structural Integration of Scandinavian Loan Verbs into Medieval English

• 05/2025: 20th Historical Sociolinguistics Network Conference 2025, University of Bristol (UK) from 21 to 23 May 2025 - 'busked hem redy boun' – the Argument Structural Integration of Norse-derived ME 'busken' as a Mixed Copy

• 09/2023: 26th International Conference on Historical Linguistics 2023, Heidelberg (Germany) - Anglo-Scandinavian Contact Influence on Verbs Entering the Causative Alternation

• 07/2023: The 22nd International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL-22), Sheffield (UK) - Structural Integration of Norse-derived verbs in the Ormulum

• 01/2023: Colloque Bisannuel de la Diachronie de l’Anglais (CBDA-7), (France/online) - Loan verbs strengthening existing argument structural patterns

• 09/2022:  Corpus Annotation and Data Analysis (CAnDA) Summer School, Liŋ'G VII, 2022, Göttingen (Germany) - Loan Verb Accommodation in Middle English, poster on joint work with Marlieke Shaw, KU Leuven

• 08/2022: 25th International Conference on Historical Linguistics 2022, Oxford (UK) - Loan Verbs in Contact Situations between Closely Related Languages Strengthening Existing Argument Structural Patterns

• 08/2022: 25th International Conference on Historical Linguistics 2022, Oxford (UK) - Loan verb accommodation: A comparison of Old Norse and French in Middle English, joint talk with Marlieke Shaw, KU Leuven

• 03/2022: The Once and Future English Conference, London (UK) - Structural Effects of the Integration of Cognate Loan Verbs in Contact Situations between Mutually Intelligible Languages (watch the pre-recording of this presentation here)

• 11/2021: The History of English Language in Poznań Conference, Poznań (Poland/online) - Structural Integration of Non-Cognate Loan Verbs in Contact between Closely Related Languages

• 10/2021: Contacts & Contrasts 2021 Conference, Konin (Poland/online) - Structural Integration of Cognate Loan Verbs in Contact between Closely Related Languages

• 02/2021: Poster Day in English Linguistics at the chair of English Linguistics at Saarland University (Germany/online), invited key note - Copies versus Cognates in Contact between closely related Languages

Elter, W.J. (forthcoming). 'Busked hem redy boun' – Achieving the Structural Integration of Middle English busken as a Mixed Copy into Medieval English. NOWELE.

Elter, W. J. (forthcoming). 'Structural Integration of Norse-derived verbs in the Ormulum'. In Sara M. Pons-Sanz, Belén Méndez-Naya, Andrew Cooper and Marcelle Cole (eds.) The Language of the Ormulum, Studies in the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming). 

Elter, W. J., & Shaw, M. (2025). Loan verb accommodation: a comparison of Old Norse and French in Middle English. English Language and Linguistics, 29(1), 35–58. doi:10.1017/S1360674324000029 

Elter, W. J. (2024). 'Loan Verbs in Contact Situations between Closely Related Languages Strengthening Existing Argument Structural Patterns'. Etudes Médiévales Anglaises: A French Journal of English Medieval Studies, 103 (1). pp. 217–253. L'Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur (AMAES).

Elter, W.J. (2023). Integration of Cognate Loan Verbs in Contact Between Closely Related Languages Effecting Valency Changes. In: Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, B., Trojszczak, M. (eds) Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives. Second Language Learning and Teaching. pp. 237–258. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38778-4_12

Elter, W. J. (2020). The rise of the to-dative: a language-contact approach to a phenomenon of structural language change. Mannheim Papers in Multilingualism, Acquisition and Change, 1 (Student edition), 1–71. https://doi.org/10.25521/mapmac.2020.121