English grammar and lexis from a functional perspective

On May 15 and 16 2012 Prof J. Lachlan Mackenzie conducted the seminar ‘Topics in English grammar and lexis’. Prof Lachlan Mackenzie is Honorary Professor of Functional Linguistics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam since 2007. At this university he started his career as a lecturer after completing in 1973 a 5-year MA course in French and German at the University of Aberdeen, and obtaining a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh in 1978. His expertise is in European languages, with a specialization in English linguistics. This expertise has allowed him to work as a consultant in languages and linguistics, with over 30 years of experience. Apart from English, language and linguistics, and typology, his research interests comprise lexicology, morphology, semantics and pragmatics. Throughout his career, he has actively collaborated with universities and research centres across Europe. Based in Portugal, he has worked for the last 8 years as a researcher for the ‘Discourse and Literacy’ group of the Institute for Theoretical and Computational Linguistics (ILTEC) in Lisbon. His research there is focused on the relation between Functional Discourse Grammar and dialogue. Prof Lachlan Mackenzie combines his work as a researcher at the Portuguese Institute and as a consultant with the editing of the major journal of functional linguistics, Functions of Language, and the work derived from his position of Research Manager of the Santiago-based international research programme SCIMITAR. Among Prof Mackenzie’s most recent publications are the following: the well-known 2008 monograph, co-authored with Kees Hengeveld, Functional Discourse Grammar: a typologically-based theory of language atructure (Oxford University Press); Writing in English: a guide for advanced learners (2nd ed. 2011, A. Francke), co-authored with Dirk Siepmann, John D. Gallagher and Mike Hannay; and the brand new grammar Compare and contrast: an English grammar for speakers of Spanish, co-authored with Elena Martínez Caro (2012, Comares).

Outline of the seminar: The seminar focused on four topics:
(1) the double-possessive nominalization structure (eg. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait): The presentation focused on the frequency of occurrence of the structure, on its purpose of use, syntactic positioning, the semantic categories of entity proposed by Functional Discourse Grammar, the interaction of nominalization and psych verbs, and its effect on syntactic ‘priming’. It was concluded that the structure is the least used form of nominalization in English. Though it is assumed to have the characteristics of a full transitive clause, it is linked metonymically to various other meanings. It is mainly used to designate mental processes, and it is not in free variation with full clauses.
(2) the adverbializing construction on a friendly basis: The claim is that the formula on a(n) _ basis should be recognized as a construction with a distinct function in English grammar. Based on a quantitative analysis of the BNC, the high frequency of on a regular basis renders this formula as a prototype for the construction. On a regular basis was contrasted with regularly in terms of the frequency and periodicity it expresses. The formula was also analyzed in terms of the complex fillers occupying the slot before basis: their frequency, semantic and morphosyntactic characteristics, and punctuation.
(3) English fail to: This verb was shown to have uses as a periphrastic negative. Adopting a corpus-analytical approach, the verb fail was examined as a complement-taking verb, a ‘subject-raising verb’, and as a periphrasis; the frequency and characteristic of the verbs following fail to were also analysed.
(4) ‘English as a moving target’: Prof Mackenzie looked into the advantages of a teaching approach in which the teacher adopts the role of a fellow learner and for which the Google n-gram viewer becomes a very useful teaching tool. With a few searches for lexicology, inflectional and derivational morphology, Prof Mackenzie demonstrated that the tool is a very attractive device, since it allows comparability and contrast between languages and creates a powerful motivating effect on students towards using corpora to find out linguistic trends on their own.

(De-)Constructionalising the English language

On April 23 2012 Dr Graeme Trousdale taught the seminar "Constructionalization and constructional changes in the history of English". Graeme Trousdale is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh, where he teaches both at undergraduate and graduate level. Dr Trousdale studied English Language and Literature at the University of Manchester before moving to Edinburgh to complete a postgraduate programme. In 2000 he obtained his PhD with a dissertation entitled Variation and (socio)linguistic theory: a case study of Tyneside English. He has been a guest lecturer in Sociolinguistics at the University of Glasgow, and has taught in Italy and India as part of various exchange programmes. His research interests cover a broad number of topics, ranging from Grammaticalization and lexicalization in English through to Non-standard varieties of English and Educational Linguistics. He has also done extensive work in the field of Construction Grammar. Dr Trousdale's most recent publications include Introduction to English sociolinguistics (Edinburgh University Press, 2010) and Gradience, gradualness and grammaticalization, co-edited with Elizabeth Traugott (John Benjamins, 2010). He will soon be presenting the Handbook of Construction Grammar (Oxford University Press), co-edited with Thomas Hoffmann. At the moment he is working with Elizabeth Traugott on a volume which has been given the provisional title Constructionalization and constructional changes.
Outline of the seminar: This seminar provided an introduction to aspects of diachronic Construction Grammar, and its application to changes in the history of English. Particularly, it concentrated on the notion of constructionalization, the creation of new form-meaning pairings as a product of micro neo-analyses. These new constructions may be of varying degrees of schematicity and complexity, and may encode procedural meaning, referential meaning, or some combination of the two. The first part of the seminar provided a general introduction to aspects of Construction Grammar, particularly those aspects which are of relevance to the kinds of language change to be discussed in the second part. Graeme Trousdale argued that constructional knowledge is best represented as a network of nodes linked in a prototype-based inheritance hierarchy, and that constructional change may involve change in nodes (the constructions themselves), in links between nodes, or both. In contrasting constructional change with constructionalization, he also discussed related phenomena like grammaticalization, lexicalization and degrammaticalization. The second part of the seminar considered three case studies. The first involved grammatical constructionalization – the development of the what with construction (e.g. what with the kids, we can’t take a holiday this year) – where a new procedural marker has emerged since the late Middle English period. The second was the development of the noun forming suffix –dom (as in wisdom and kingdom) as a kind of lexical constructionalization, where a new derivational suffix arises. The third was the development of composite predicate constructions such as he gave him a tongue-lashing 'he chastised him', which was shown to have properties of both grammatical and lexical constructionalization.

Explaining syntactic and grammatical variation

On March 5 and 6 2012 Prof Britta Mondorf taught the seminar "Determinants of grammatical variation in English". Prof Britta Mondorf holds the Chair in English Linguistics at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. She obtained her Habilitation in English Linguistics in Paderborn, and her PhD in Düsseldorf. She was a visiting scholar in institutions such as Wuppertal and Duisburg-Essen Universities. Prof Mondorf has published on linguistic variation, functional grammar, sociolinguistics, semantics, pragmatics and historical linguistics. Well known are her monographs More support for more-support: the role of processing constraints on the choice between synthetic and analytic comparative forms (2009) and Gender differences in English syntax (2004), as well as the co-edited volume Determinants of grammatical variation in English (2003). In her current research Britta Mondorf is dealing with reflexivity and (de)transitivizing strategies, the role of language processing in grammatical variation and change, British-American contrasts in syntax and morphology, the functional motivation of synthetic-analytic contrasts, and gender differences.
Outline of the seminar: Which factors constrain the choice between functionally equivalent constructions? This is the central issue explored in the seminar. Prof Mondorf dealt with recent research providing new insights into the factors that determine grammatical variation in English. Thematically the workshop focused on the following four variation phenomena: (i) Comparative alternation: which factors constrain the choice between more proud vs. prouder?; (ii) Gender differences in syntax: Why do women and men differ in their use of causal and concessive clauses?; (iii) Way-constructions: What is the function of way-constructions, eg. Grabski slurped his way to the bottom of the soup bowl?; (iv) Dummy it: What is the function of non-referential it in eg. leg it, move it, shove it. In addition to showing that grammatical variation is systematically constrained by factors from all levels of linguistic analysis, Prof Mondorf discussed pertinent research in terms of its relevance for linguistic theory-building.

On articles and multivariate analysis in English

On January 9 and 10 2012 Prof Marianne Hundt taught the seminar "Variable article use". Marianne Hundt has been Professor of English Linguistics at Zürich University since 2008. Prior to that she held a chair of English Linguistics at the University of Heidelberg. She obtained her MA, PhD and Habilitation at the University of Freiburg and was a visiting scholar at Portland State University, Oregon (USA) and at Victoria University, Wellington (New Zealand). In her PhD Prof Hundt dealt with New Zealand English, and her investigation led to a monograph published by John Benjamins. In her Habilitation in English Linguistics Prof Hundt investigated the English mediopassive construction, and this study was published by Rodopi. Her 2009 co-authored monograph Change in Contemporary English. A Grammatical Study, published by Cambridge University Press, is also well-known in the field. Prof Marianne Hundt has edited and co-edited a number of books with leading publishers such as Cambridge University Press, John Benjamins and Rodopi, and has published extensively in international journals on issues such as new Englishes, the English verbal paradigm, English syntax (relativisation, complexity) and language change in general.
Outline of the seminar: The definite and indefinite articles in English are amongst the most frequent words. However, the contexts where there are used (or at times omitted) are difficult to describe and there is variability across time, regional varieties, text types, etc. In this seminar, Prof Hundt started out by briefly looking at the history of articles in English and then moved on to three case studies. The first provided a focus on article use with institutional nouns like church and university in two major reference varieties, namely British and American English. The second considered diachronic change in article use with single role referents like president and captain in predicate position. The third case study took language contact into account and focus on variable article use in a variety of Indian English. The seminar provided the theoretical background necessary to study variable article use in English. Prof Hundt also looked at issues related to data retrieval and analysis, such as the definition of a variable context and variable rule analysis. Finally, the seminar provided an insight into the specific challenges involved in the analysis of spoken data.

Information structure and word-order variation

On June 22 and 23 2011 Prof Gregory Ward (taught the seminar "Information structure and word-order variation". Gregory Ward received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985. He is currently Professor of Linguistics at Northwestern University, where he has taught since 1986. His primary research area is discourse/pragmatics, with specific interests in pragmatic theory, information structure, intonational meaning, and reference/anaphora. Recent publications have investigated deferred reference, event anaphora, functional compositionality, generalized conversational implicature and the semantics-pragmatics boundary. With Birner, he co-authored Information status and noncanonical word order in English (Benjamins, 1998). With Birner and Rodney Huddleston, he is co-author of the chapter "Information packaging" in The Cambridge grammar of the English language (Cambridge University Press, 2002). He is co-editor of Blackwell's The handbook of pragmatics (Blackwell 2004). Prof Ward also serves as a freelance linguistic consultant on legal issues relating to sentence and utterance interpretation.
Outline of the seminar: 1. Introduction and theoretical preliminaries. Information Structure (partitioning of information in a discourse into given – old, familiar – and new information). The 'Given-New Contract'. Communicative Dynamism. Topichood. Aspects of information structure: reference (choice of referring expression), cohesion (coherence relations), topic (discourse topic vs. sentence topic), focus (focus/presupposition, common ground), intonation/prosody. 2. Word-order variation. Noncanonical Word Order. Argument Reversal: inversion (discourse-status and hearer-status of the constituents of inversion; is it discourse-status or hearer-status that is relevant?), preposing (subcategorized PPs vs. adjunct PPs, NPs, PPs, VPs, APs; types: focus preposing and topicalization), postposing, right/left-dislocation, wh/it/that-clefts related constructions: passives with by-phrases. 3. A corpus-based analysis.