A Medievalist in the Etymological Jungle

About the Lecture: 

Most hunters for English word origins are medievalists. What guides them through the word jungle? Intuition, experience, and good luck (serendipity). Yet the catch sometimes escapes. Professor Liberman will share his experience of such a hunter in the course of three decades.

About the Speaker:

Anatoly Liberman is a professor in the Department of German, Nordic, Slavic and Dutch at this university. His main areas of specialization are historical linguistics and oral tradition. In language history, most of his works are devoted to phonetics and etymology. His recent book (2023), published by the University of Minnesota Press, deals with the origin of English idioms and is titled Take My Word for It.  In medieval literature and folklore, Anatoly's contributions deal with Germanic myths and fairy tales. For many years, he has been investigating the most prominent features of the medieval mentality as it differs from the post-Renaissance way of looking at the world.