- variationist & probabilistic linguistics
- dialectology and dialectometry
- varieties of English world-wide
- historical linguistics, in
particular: syntactic change
- language/dialect typology
My
research interests ultimately all boil down to
variationist (socio)linguistics. I view linguistic variation as
a window into the hidden structure of human
language and the nature of linguistic knowledge.
My PhD dissertation project was concerned with a
primarily psycholinguistic phenomenon (persistence,
a.k.a. priming) and its relevance for
describing and understanding variation in
interactional discourse. My current research
interests lie with (i) large-scale
dialectological and geolinguistic patterns of
variation, (ii) the interface between linguistic
typology and variation studies (key terms:
analyticity,
syntheticity, and
linguistic complexity), and (iii) the
probabilistic modeling of (morpho)syntactic
variation (in synchrony and diachrony). I
usually work quantitatively on the empirical
basis of naturalistic corpus data, although I am
open-minded about qualitative approaches and
other data sources (e.g. survey material).
Current projects:
-
2008-2013
Corpus approaches to geolinguistic and genetic
patterns of aggregate morphosyntactic variation
in varieties of English
Funded by the FRIAS (RAs: Christoph Wolk &
Katharina Ehret)
details
-
2009-2013,
with Joan Bresnan (Stanford University)
Predicting syntax in space and time
Funded by the FRIAS (RA: Christoph Wolk), in conjunction with NSF grant
BCS-1025602 ("The
development of syntactic alternations", PI: Joan Bresnan)
details
-
with Lars
Hinrichs, UT Austin
Prescriptivism in Present-Day American
English
-
with Marianne
Hundt, University of Zurich
Grammatical variation in Early New Zealand
English
-
with Anette
Rosenbach, Tanagra Wines
Genitive and dative variability in Late Modern
English
-
with Tom
Ruette, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
A bottom-up approach to multilectal variation
in the lexicon of written Standard English
-
with Jeff
Siegel, University of New England
Measuring analyticity and syntheticity in
creoles
-
with Bernhard
Wälchli, Stockholm University
Aggregating dialectology and typology
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