Department of German and Dutch

Department of German and Dutch

GERMAN COURSE INFORMATION For full information about DUTCH courses and staff please CLICK HERE

   

Sheila Watts is a graduate of Dublin University who moved to Cambridge in
1998 to take up a post teaching German and Germanic linguistics. The main
focus of her research to date has been on the expression of time within the
verb phrase through categories like tense, aspect and Aktionsart, and she
has written on verbal prefixes, on the development of the perfect, and on
other phenomena linked to grammaticalization in the older Germanic
languages, with a particular focus on Old Saxon. Another interest concerns
ideas about the German language in the seventeenth century, and she has
published on both the grammarian Justus Georg Schottelius and the
lexicographer Caspar Stieler. She is committed to all aspects of language
teaching, and has published on ab initio learners as well as on the
teaching of spoken German at third level.
Since 2011 Sheila has been part of a project group with Anne Breitbarth
(Ghent) and George Walkden (Manchester) working to build a digital Corpus
of Historical Low German (CHLG). The project has secured funding from the
Newton Trust and the British Academy.