Dr Benito Trollip
Digital Humanities Researcher: Afrikaans
Biography:
Dr Benito Trollip is a curious and enthusiastic person with a passion for people. When it comes to research, he is especially interested in the ways people construct meaning through language. He is also interested in other aspects of research including intellectual property rights and the ownership, management and distribution of data. As a SADiLaR researcher, Benito is always discovering new ways to bring language and the digital age together. In his PhD, that he completed in 2022, his focus was on the ways in which Afrikaans speakers build judgement into their language by using different means. The type of words he is interested in are grouped into a what he calls morphological evaluative constructions, that is to say complex words that contain a meaning that indicates an evaluation by the language user.
Qualifications:
- LLB North-West University, Potchefstroom
- BA Honours Afrikaans and Dutch North-West University, Potchefstroom
- MA General Linguistics focused on Afrikaans and Dutch North-West University, Potchefstroom
- PhD in Language and Literature with Afrikaans and Dutch with the title “Morfologiese evalueringskonstruksies in Afrikaans” – accessible here.
Work experience:
Previously Benito has been part of several projects that gave him exposure to part of speech tagging, semantic annotation, and archiving mainly through the NWU Centre for Text Technology (CTexT). He has been assisting with different projects since 2011, especially with textual data. In 2018 he also went to the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam to work for two months under the guidance of Professor Nicoline van der Sijs on a collaborative archiving project between Dutch and Afrikaans.
He was a temporary lecturer at the Law Faculty of the North-West University’s Potchefstroom campus during the second semester in 2016. The subject he presented was Communication skills in the legal context III and it involved developing third year students’ communication skills through lectures on listening and the distinction and necessity of legal interpretation and translation.
Blogs:
- Is toegang ʼn gegewe? | Is access a given?
- Ons moet oor dinge begin praat om daaroor te kán praat
- Taal in die tyd van die Afstandskepper
- ʼn Videoreeks oor intensiewe vorme in Afrikaans
- Digitale geesteswetenskappe: ʼn saak van doen én dink
- Is there a branch of language that doesn’t deserve being studied? Impressions in the light of VivA’s Vloek met flair (en voorbehoud)-symposium on swearing in Afrikaans
Links:
Contact: Email: benito.trollip@nwu.ac.za