Overview
Browne's research interests include Slavic and general linguistics. His specialty within Slavic is the Serbo-Croatian area (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian). He has also worked on or taught other South Slavic languages, Polish, Russian and Belarusian, the Balkan language area, Old Church Slavonic, Slavic historical grammar, comparative and contrastive grammar, and pedagogical grammar.
In general linguistics, Browne has done research in syntax, morphology, and phonology, in particular relative and other subordinate clauses, interrogatives, clitic rules, word order, reflexive verbs, accent rules, etc., usually using Slavic material.
Research Focus
- Slavic Linguistics
- General Linguistics
- Serbo-Croatian Area (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian)
- Slavic Studies
- Medieval Studies
- Syntax
- Morphology
- Phonology
Publications
- Adjacent vs. separated placement of preposition and noun as a factor in noun inflection: the cases of Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian pazuho 'armpit'. in P. Arkadiev, J. Pakerys, I. Seskauskiene, V. Zeimantiene, eds., Studies in Baltic and other Languages: A Festschrift for Axel Holvoet on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Vilnius: Vilnius University Press, 2021.
- Syntactic studies in Burgenland Croatian: the order of clitics, Balkanistica 23, 2010
- Porjadok enklitikoh u jaziku vojvodjanskih Rusnacoh [The order of clitics in the language of the Vojvodina Rusins], Švetlosc XLIV.3, July-September 2008
- W. Browne and Theresa Alt, A Handbook of Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian, SEELRC (Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) 2004
- Serbo-Croat, in The Slavonic Languages, B. Comrie and G. Corbett (eds.), London, 1993.
- Turkisms in the Balkans: True and false friends, in Languages in Contact, Zagreb, 1990.
- Relative Clauses in Serbo-Croatian. Zagreb, 1986.
- Numerous articles in Contrastive Analysis of English and Serbo-Croatian I, R. Filipovic (ed.), Zagreb, 1975.
- Serbo-Croatian enclitics for English-speaking learners (1975, reprinted in Journal of Slavic Linguistics 12.1-2, 2004)
- On the problem of enclitic placement in Serbo-Croatian, in R. Brecht and C. Chvany, eds., Slavic Transformational Syntax, Ann Arbor 1974