Helsingin yliopisto - Englantilainen filologia

Roderick McConchie

PhD, Lecturer, Researcher
Room: C613
Consultation hours: On leave of absence until Spring 2010

Telephone national: (09) 191 22509 (office)
Telephone international: +358 9 191 22509 (office)

Telephone national: (09) 191 23212 (research unit)
Telephone international: +358 9 191 23212 (research unit)

Telephone national: (019) 373 008 (home)
Telephone International: +358 19 373 008
Fax national: (019) 373 782
Fax international: +358 19 373 782

E-mail: roderick.mcconchie(at)helsinki.fi

Research interests

My research interests cover medical terminology in the sixteenth century, the history of English dictionaries, and the prefix dis- in English. Recent work includes an article on the occurrence of Italian fencing terminology in C16 and C17 English dictionaries.

Recent publications

2002
‘The brilliant youth and long, sad decline of the stockado: Some Italian fencing terms in English’ forthcoming in Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi & Matti Rissanen, eds. (2002). Variation Past and Present. VARIENG Studies in English for Terttu Nevalainen (Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki LXI). Helsinki: Société Néophilologique, 77-97.
‘Doctors and dictionaries in sixteenth-century England’ Studies in English Historical Linguistics and Philology: A Festschrift for Akio Oizumi, ed. Fisiak, Jacek, Studies in English Medieval Language and Literature, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 267-92.

2004
‘Richard Howlet’ New Dictionary of National Biography Oxford: Clarendon Press.
‘Peter Levens’ New Dictionary of National Biography Oxford: Oxford University Press.
‘John Baret’ New Dictionary of National Biography Oxford: Oxford University Press.
‘Francis Holyoake’ New Dictionary of National Biography Oxford: Oxford University Press.
‘Thomas Drant’ New Dictionary of National Biography Oxford: Oxford University Press.

I am a current member of the internal processes of linguistic change research team of the Research Unit for Variation and Change in English. I have also been involved in the EETACS project, for which I am working on a bibliographical list of the English books up to 1600 held in the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg, and in particular the English dictionaries held by that library.

A database on the prefix dis- is now in an advanced stage of compilation, and is now a usable if not complete resource for citations of this prefix up to 1500. This is intended to be a large database derived from the online OED and MED covering the history of the prefix dis- in English in the form of contextual citations. It is hoped eventually to expand this project to cover other affixes in English as well, and to incorporate data from other corpora. A research project on the prefix dia- with advanced-level students has recently been completed.

2005
At present I am editing a sixteenth-century volume for a four volume series on the history of English lexicography. I am also editing the proceedings of the Symposium on New Approaches to Historical English Lexis, held in Helsinki in March 2005, along with Heli Tissari, Olga Timofeeva, and Tanja Saily. My database has provided sufficient material for a series of articles on the prefix dis - in early Middle English, now either forthcoming or in preparation.

Other

I do language revision of texts in English, as well as collaborating with my wife, Aili Kämäräinen, in translation from Finnish to English. Aili also translates Swedish to Finnish, English to Finnish, Swedish to English, and Norwegian to Finnish and English.