Heinz Giegerich

Who is Heinz Giegerich?

Heinz J. Giegerich is a German linguist and Professor of English Language at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

His research focuses on theories of phonological representation and derivation in relation to English and German, including:

syllable structure, stress and rhythm within metrical phonology

lexical morphology

the theory of "base-driven lexical stratification", which he has developed

Professor Giegerich studied English Language, English Literature and General Linguistics at the University of Mainz, Germany, before joining the University of Edinburgh in 1979 as a lecturer and completing his PhD there in 1983. He was Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts from 2000 to 2002. Since 2001 he has been the Head of the English Language Department.

He is the founder and General Editor of the Edinburgh Textbooks on the English Language, the author of several works on phonology, and one of the founding Editors of the linguistic morphology journal, Word Structure.

He lives in a small town called Innerleithen, in the Scottish Borders, with his wife Anne and three sons, Bruno, Max and Joseph.