Department of Linguistics

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His expertise includes Romani linguistics, language contact, and linguistic typology. He is a co-author of a monograph on the cross-dialectal variability of Romani from the perspective of linguistic typology (Mouton de Gruyter 2006) and the author of several papers on the structure, history, and dialectology of Romani (e.g. in International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung). He was the key investigator of a research project on the grammatical description of Hungarian Romani (OSI Budapest) and the key investigator of a project on language contact of Romani in the Czech and Slovak Republics (Czech Science Foundation, 2008–10).

He has long-time experience (since 1997) with linguistic and anthropological field research in Romani communities in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. Since 2003 he has been the coordinator of the linguistic documentation of Romani varieties in East Central Europe. He is fluent in Central Romani and has at least the working knowledge of several of the project’s elicitation languages (native in Czech, fluent in Slovak and Russian, working knowledge of Hungarian, Polish, and German).
 

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The project collaborator Mgr. Michael Beníšek (*1981) obtained his MA degree in Romani Studies and Indian Studies with a specialization in Sanskrit at Charles University in Prague in 2008. Currently, he is PhD candidate at the Institute of Linguistics and Finno-Ugric Studies of Charles University in the field of General Linguistics, focusing on the description of a Romani variety spoken in Transcarpathian Ukraine. Since 2009, he has been employed as Research Assistant at the Seminar of Romani Studies of Charles University,  where he teaches, inter alia, several undergraduate courses on the Romani language for students of Romani Studies. In 2008 – 2011, he taught Sanskrit and Anthropology of Ancient India at the University of Pardubice.

His expertise includes the historical grammar of the Romani language, the dialectology of Central Romani with a focus on the western Ukrainian varieties of North Central Romani, Indo-Aryan linguistics, and Sanskrit and Prakrit studies. He is the author of several papers on the grammatical and cultural history of Romani (e.g. in Romani Studies, Indo-Iranian Journal, Archiv Orientální).

He has participated, as field researcher, in the Charles University’s project on language contact of Romani in the Czech and Slovak Republics directed by Viktor Elšík. He has long-time experience (since 2000) with linguistic field research in Romani communities in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Ukraine. He is fluent in Central Romani and has at least the working knowledge of several of the project’s elicitation languages (native in Czech, fluent in Slovak, working knowledge of Ukrainian, Russian, and German).
 

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The project collaborator Mgr. Zuzana Bodnárová (*1984) is employed as Researcher at the Seminar of Romani Studies of the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University. In 2009, she graduated from the Charles University’s MA programs in Romani Studies and Cultural Studies. In 2010, she initiated PhD studies in the field of General Linguistics at the Institute of Linguistics and Finno-Ugric Studies, where she currently works on her dissertation, a detailed grammatical description and overview of the sociolinguistic situation of the so-called Vend dialects of Romani spoken in Hungary.

In 2006–2007, she participated on the University of Manchester’s project The Romani Morpho-syntax Database (RMS) directed by Yaron Matras. In 2008, she collaborated on the University of Graz’s project Romani Lexical Database (ROMLEX) directed by Dieter W. Halwachs. She has taught a course on the linguistic typology and dialectology of Romani at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Pécs, Hungary. Her expertise is on the structure and dialectology of Central Romani varieties in contact with Hungarian.

She has participated, as field researcher, in the Charles University’s project on language contact of Romani in the Czech and Slovak Republics directed by Viktor Elšík. She has extensive experience (since 2006) with linguistic field research in Romani communities in Hungary, Slovakia and Montenegro. She spent a year on fieldwork in a Romani community in Hungary, which resulted in a detailed grammatical description of the local Romani variety, the collaborator’s MA thesis. She is fluent in Central Romani and has at least the working knowledge of several of the project’s elicitation languages (native in Hungarian, fluent in Slovak and Czech, working knowledge of Slovene).