The work of senior professor Dr. Rosemarie Tracy focuses on monolingual and multilingual language acquisition and language contact, from a basic research perspective but also from a practice-oriented point of view. She was the first chair of Synchronic English Linguistics at the University of Mannheim. Here she built up and expanded the area of synchronic linguistics, both in teaching and research. She closely cooperated with the cities of Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and various foundations for transfer projects. Furthermore, she is co-founder and partner of the Mannheim Centre for Empirical Research on Multilingualism (MAZEM gGmbH). Her current research projects, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), include a project focusing on the dynamics of German as a minority and heritage language in the U.S. and a transfer project aiming at supporting the acquisition and maintenance of family languages (both are subprojects of the Research Unit Emerging Grammars (RUEG), funded by DFG).
“Rosemarie Tracy deserves this prize not only because she is an exceptional linguist who has had significant influence on language acquisition research but also because she clearly advocated for the societal consequences that follow from linguistic research and has made them known to the best of her ability”, the DGfS justifies their decision. “Professor Tracy is exceptionally gifted, as she is able to communicate complex linguistic findings and insights in a way that is accessible to the broad public”, the DGfS says.
Click here for the press release of the DGfS