Steven Clancy

Senior Lecturer in Russian, Slavic Linguistics, and 2nd-Language Acquisition
Academic Director, Center for the Study of Languages
Director, Slavic Language Program
President, Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Association (SCLA)

[see also my page at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures]


University of Chicago
Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures
1130 East 59th Street, Foster 406
Chicago, IL 60637


Teaching Schedule and Office Hours for
Dr. Steven Clancy

Courses for Aut 2008
2nd-Year Russian (RUSS 20100)

Not teaching Win 2009

Courses for Spr 2009
Corpus Linguistics
(SLAV 20500/30500=LING 27340/37340)
MW 1:30-2:50

Teaching Slavic Languages (SLAV 31500)
MW 9:30-11:20

Office Hours: Mon 1:00-2:00, Wed 3:15-4:15 and by appointment

Office: Foster 413 or CSL Cobb 2nd Floor, (773) 702-8567
(no voice mail, if no answer, best to use email or department phone)
email: sclancy@uchicago.edu
Department: (773) 702-8033
Fax: (773) 702-7030

NOTE: I plan to offer Human Being, Language, and Mind:
An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics
(LING 26700/36700=SLAV 21700/31700)
again in either 2010 or 2011.

Research Interests

Steven Clancy is Senior Lecturer in Russian and Slavic Linguistics in the Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures at the University of Chicago. He is also the Academic Director of the University of Chicago Center for the Study of Languages (CSL, Cobb Hall, 2nd Floor). His publications and works in progress include the forthcoming The Chain of BEING and HAVING in Slavic and “The ascent of guy” as well as three books on Slavic case semantics with Laura Janda: The Case Book for Russian (2002), winner of the 2005 AATSEEL book award for best book in language pedagogy, The Case Book for Czech (2006), and The Case Book for Polish (forthcoming). His research interests include cognitive linguistics, case semantics and verbal semantics, corpus linguistics, grammaticalization, and historical linguistics. His primary languages of interest are Russian, Czech, and Polish. He is currently studying Slavic case semantics and verbal semantics utilizing various quantitative methods, including Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) and quantitative corpus linguistics. He is currently the president of the Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Association (SCLA), an international organization for Slavic Linguists.

Curriculum Vitae

My CV in PDF format. (Updated October 2008)

Select Publications

Clancy, Steven J. Forthcoming (under review for publication). The Chain of BEING and HAVING in Slavic.

Clancy, Steven J. 2006. “The Topology of Slavic Case: Semantic Maps and Multidimensional Scaling”, in Glossos, Issue 7, pp. 1-28. (R)

Clancy, Steven J. 2005. “The Conceptual Nexus of BE and HAVE: a semantic network of BE, HAVE, and their neighbors,” in Times and Cases: A View of Slavic Conceptualizations, Laura A. Janda and Tore Nesset, eds. Glossos Issue 5, pp. 1-27. (R)

Clancy, Steven J. 2001. “Semantic Maps for BE and HAVE in Slavic,” Glossos, Issue 1, Spring (Papers from the First Annual Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Association Conference, November 3-4, 2000 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). (R)

Clancy, Steven J. 1999. “The Ascent of guy”, American Speech 74(3):282-97. (R)

with Laura A. Janda

Clancy, Steven J., and Laura A. Janda. In Progress. The Case Book for Polish (BOOK, CD-ROM, and WEBSITE).

Janda, Laura A., and Steven J. Clancy. 2006. The Case Book for Czech (BOOK, CD-ROM, and WEBSITE). Bloomington, IN: Slavica.

Janda, Laura A., and Steven J. Clancy. 2002. The Case Book for Russian (BOOK, CD-ROM, and WEBSITE). Bloomington, IN: Slavica. BOOK AWARD: 2005 AATSEEL Award for Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy.

The Case Book Series
Laura A. Janda • Steven J. Clancy

The Case Book for Russian (2002)
Laura A. Janda and Steven J. Clancy
Slavica Publishers
Enter Website • More information
Sample Chapter

The Case Book for Czech (2006)
Laura A. Janda and Steven J. Clancy
Slavica Publishers
Enter Website • More information
Sample Chapter
The Case Book for Polish (forthcoming)
Steven J. Clancy and Laura A. Janda
Enter Website • More information
Forthcoming

Recent Travel and Conference Planning

In 2007-2008 I organized three international conferences and gave presentations on my research. SCLC-2007 was held at the University of Chicago, October 12-14, 2007 as the 2007 annual conference of the Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Association (SCLA). The Masterclass in Corpus Methods in Linguistics and Language Pedagogy (CMLLP-2008) was held at the University of Chicago, Center for the Study of Languages, March 26-30, 2008. SCLC-2008 was held in conjunction with the Cognitive and Functional Perspectives on Dynamic Tendencies in Languages conference of the Estonian Cognitive Linguistics Association (ECLA) in Tartu, Estonia, May 29-June 1, 2008 as the 2008 annual conference for SCLA.

I was an instructor along with Prof. Michele Feist, University of Lafayette for the use of Multidimensional Scaling in Linguistic Research for the Fourth Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics (EMCL-4) which preceded Language, Culture, and Mind III at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark, July 7-12, 2008.

In August, I traveled to Bergen, Norway for the kickoff meeting of the Indo-European Case and Argument Structure in a Typological Perspective (IECASTP) project. I will be exploring the historical subject (with nominative case marking) and oblique subject (non-nominative case marking) constructions in Slavic for this project headed by Jóhanna Barðdal of the University of Bergen.

Upcoming Travel and Conference Planning

I will present at the Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language Conference (CSDL 9) conference at Case Western Reserve University October 18-20, 2008.

My co-organizer of CMLLP-2008, Dagmar Divjak, and I will team up again for a follow up to our Corpus Linguistics Masterclass with a Masterclass in Experimental Methods in (Slavic) Cognitive Linguistics — Easter Break 2009, University of Sheffield, England.

I've also agreed to chair the planning of the Fifth Empirical Methods in Cognitive Linguistics (EMCL-5) workshop for 2010 along with Prof. Michele Feist, University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

SCLC-2009 is tentatively planned for Prague, Czech Republic in Autumn 2009.

Research in Progress

Semantics maps, multidimensional scaling in the study of Slavic case systems and verbal systems. Pilot project on DESTINATION-LOCATION-SOURCE constructions in Slavic and beyond.

Quantitative corpus linguistic study of BE constructions in Russian.

The Russian Subject: study of subject (with nominative case marking) and oblique subject (non-nominative case marking) constructions in contemporary Russian with reference to Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian.

The Slavic Subject (broader study for the Slavic languages family)

The Case Book for Polish (see above)

New Course returns for Spring 2009

Corpus Linguistics (SLAV 20500/30500=LING 27340/37340)
MW 1:30-2:50
This course introduces the use of language corpora (large-scale electronic collections of authentic written and spoken language) in linguistic research from both soft (qualitative) and hard (quantitative) perspectives. Students will receive hands-on experience in corpus processing and data analysis and will learn how to work with existing corpora for their languages of interest as well as how to construct corpora of their own. Particular attention will be paid to the role of the corpus as a source of linguistic data and to the potential of corpus methods to enrich research in other theoretical frameworks, such as usage-based linguistics, construction grammar, cognitive linguistics, and functional linguistics. S. Clancy. Spring.

Selected Research, Talks, and Publications

Course Information


Last updated: February 28, 2009.