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ISLE Research Network

Search for research themes

Members of ISLE can choose to create a brief profile of their current research activities for publication on our website. Each profile may contain up to 5 'themes', and each theme may include any number of keywords.

We aim for this page to be a showcase of research in English Linguistics. It will enable members to get in touch with others working on related research topics.

Use your own keywords or choose ISLE member / Linguist List keywords:

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(Socio)Linguistic Effects across Political Borders

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Long neglected as "unimportant" variation, political borders that cut across older dialect zones reveal interesting linguistic and sociolinguistic features that are very "real" for speakers

Broadcast English

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I study the role of broadcast English on standardization of spoken language; in particular the role of the Advisory Committee on Spoken English of the BBC.

Standardization of the English language

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The topic of my research is the history of normative English grammar, particularly its contacts with contemporary philosophy of language, rhetoric and poetics.

  • Expires after: 01-01-2525
  • Keywords: Standardization,Historical Linguistics,Historical Sociolinguistics,Language And Culture,Prescriptivism,Grammar Writing

19c grammars and grammar writing

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I investigate British and American grammars, grammar writing and their influence on language change of the time, based on corpus studies and my collection of nineteenth-century grammars (CNG).

Variation and Change in English

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Grammatical and phonological variation in past and present varieties of English; functional conditioning; based on linguistic corpora and text databases; with a focus on quantitative methodologies.

  • Expires after: 31-12-2030
  • Keywords: Alternations,Constraints On Variation,Corpus Linguistics,Diachronic Variation,Historical Linguistics,Language Change,Phonology,Quantitative Methods,Variationist Linguistics,World Englishes,Grammar

Language contact and grammatical change in early English

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How much is early English syntax shaped by contact with Celtic and Norse? My Konstanz inaugural lecture (see link) gives an overview of some of my work on this so far.

Constructionalization

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I seek to refine the relationship between constructionalization and constructional changes outlined in Traugott and Trousdale (2013)

  • Expires after: 01-09-2021
  • Keywords: Historical Linguistics

Verb-second

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When the verb does and doesn't come second.

  • Website: walkden.space/research.html
  • Expires after: 01-07-2021
  • Keywords: Syntax,Historical Linguistics,Corpus Linguistics,Old English,Middle English,Historical Syntax,Grammar

Null subjects

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Is the subject expressed, or not?

  • Website: walkden.space/research.html
  • Expires after: 01-07-2021
  • Keywords: Syntax,Corpus Linguistics,Historical Linguistics,Old English,Historical Syntax,Grammar

Constraints on syntactic variation: noun phrases in early Germanic languages

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The project (2017-2020) focuses on noun phrase word order in Old English, Old Norse (Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian), Old Swedish, Old High German, Old Saxon, and Gothic.

Information structure and word order change in Germanic and Romance languages

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Completed project (2010-2014), which dealt with information structure in Old English, Old Norse, Old High German, Old French, Old Spanish, Classical Portuguese. It is a topic I am still interested in.

Language Mixing in Medieval England

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The project investigates language mixing in historical documents from medieval England. Its results contribute mainly to syntaxctic theory, comparative hsitorical linguistics and digital humanities

Transforming Early English

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Historical pragmatics offers a powerful explanatory paradigm for the formal changes medieval English and Scots texts undergo as they are transmitted across time and space

  • Expires after: 31-07-2020
  • Keywords: English Historical Linguistics,History Of Scots,Philology,Historical Pragmatics,Written Language

Social embedding of neologisms in the history of English

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Tracking new words using historical corpora, OED & HT: who used neologisms, how they spread, what kinds of semantic fields and social meanings they were associated with and how this changed over time.