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William Kretzschmar

Albert Christ-Janer Award 2012

William Kretzschmar, Harry and Jane Willson Professor in Humanities, is recognized as an international leader in each of his four primary areas of research: American English studies, English lexicography, corpus linguistics, and language variation studies. He is editor-in-chief of the Linguistic Atlas Project (LAP), the oldest and largest ongoing American English survey project in the United States. Under his leadership, UGA has become a national center for dialect research, and the materials of the LAP are the best source for the history of mid-century American English. Kretzschmar is the American pronunciation consultant for the Oxford English Dictionary and American editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English. Kretzschmar is also a pioneer in the field of humanities computing. He has introduced numerous techniques of computer mapping and statistical analysis to his field, and has continued his leadership by showing how patterns of language as we speak and write it can be explained with complexity science.

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