Language Variation Contact Details
Tel: +44 (0)1524 594644
Room: County South, C81
Office Hour: Monday 1-2
Dr Willem Hollmann
Lecturer in Linguistics
Degree: MA (Amsterdam), MA (Manchester), PhD (Manchester)
Associated research centres and groups: Cognitive Linguistics, University Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language (UCREL)
Potential Doctoral Proposals
I would be happy to receive applications in any of these areas: cognitive-typological linguistic theory (especially construction grammar and the usage-based model), language change and the history of English, dialect grammar, as well as the arsenal of research methods used in all these areas of linguistics.
Research interests
My research falls into three "strands" (where I use scare quotes to signal that these strands aren't completely separate but overlap to quite a large extent):
- Cognitive-typological linguistic theory and methodology. I am interested in investigating the scope and limits of the cognitive-typological view of language (especially grammar and semantics, which on this view are very much intertwined), and its associated methodologies (prominently including corpus linguistics).
- Language change and the history of English. I have an active research interest in mechanisms of change, both language-internal (roughly speaking, grammaticalisation) and external (social factors). My research focuses especially on change in English, but that's not so much because of any special interest in this language — instead, it's mainly because of the excellent availability of historical data.
- Dialect grammar, particularly of Lancashire dialect. With my late colleague Anna Siewierska I started a project on the grammar of Lancashire dialect. The point of the project is not to describe the dialect just for the sake of it — rather, it is driven by the view that non-standard language data may, and should, be used to inform linguistic theory at large (which over the course of the history of the discipline has been somewhat preoccupied with standard varieties), including its research methods. Conversely, I also feel that traditional dialectology may benefit from a stronger interface with advances in (cognitive-typological) theoretical linguistics. This places my research within the "cognitive sociolinguistics" strand that has recently started to emerge at the interface of these two fields.
In terms of PhD supervision, I would be happy to receive applications in any of these areas, i.e. cognitive-typological linguistic theory (especially construction grammar and the usage-based model), language change and the history of English, dialect grammar, as well as the arsenal of research methods used in all these areas of linguistics. Currently I supervise or co-supervise 7 PhD students working in these areas: Caterina Guardamagna, Yueyuan Li, Noor Malihah, Masatoshi Matsumura, Soyoon Park, Dan Ponsford, and Vittorio Tantucci.
Papers in refereed journals:
- 2013a. Hollmann, Willem B. Nouns and verbs in Cognitive Grammar: where is the 'sound' evidence? Cognitive Linguistics 24.
- 2013b. Ponsford, Dan, Willem B. Hollmann, and Anna Siewierska. Sources of BET. Functions of Language 21.
- 2012. Hollmann, Willem B. Word classes: Towards a more comprehensive usage-based account. Studies in Language 36:671-698 [Special issue on Theory and data in cognitive linguistics, eds. Nikolas Gisborne and Willem B. Hollmann].
- 2011. Hollmann, Willem B. and Anna Siewierska. The status of frequency, schemas, and identity in Cognitive Sociolinguistics: A case study on definite article reduction. Cognitive Linguistics 22:25-54.
- 2007a. Hollmann, Willem B. From language-specific constraints to implicational universals: a cognitive-typological view of the dative alternation. Functions of Language 14:57-78 [Special issue on Ditransitives, eds. Anna Siewierska and Willem B. Hollmann].
- 2007b. Hollmann, Willem B. and Anna Siewierska. A construction grammar account of possessive constructions in Lancashire dialect: some advantages and challenges. English Language and Linguistics 11:407-424.
- 2007c. Broccias, Cristiano and Willem B. Hollmann. Do we need summary and sequential scanning in (Cognitive) grammar? Cognitive Linguistics 18:487-522. [Figures to be downloaded separately here.]
- 2006. Hollmann, Willem B. and Anna Siewierska. Corpora and (the need for) other methods in a study of Lancashire dialect. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 54:203-216.
Chapters in edited volumes:
- 2013. Hollmann, Willem B. Constructions in cognitive sociolinguistics. In Thomas Hoffmann and Graeme Trousdale (eds.), The Oxford handbook of construction grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- 2010. Croft, William, Johanna Barddal, Willem B. Hollmann, Violeta Sotirova, and Chiaki Taoka. Revising Talmy's typological classification of complex events. In Hans C. Boas (ed.),Contrastivestudies in construction grammar, 201-236. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- 2009a. Willem B. Semantic change. In Jonathan Culpeper, Francis Katamba, Paul Kerswill,and Tony McEnery (eds.), English language: description, variation and context. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
- 2009b. Hollmann, Willem B. Grammatical change. In Jonathan Culpeper, Francis Katamba, Paul Kerswill, and Tony McEnery (eds.), English language: description, variation andcontext. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
- 2007. Siewierska, Anna and Willem B. Hollmann. Ditransitive clauses in English with special reference to Lancashire dialect. In Mike Hannay and Gerard J. Steen (eds.), Structural-functional studies in English grammar, 83-102. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
- 2006. Hollmann, Willem B. Passivisability of English periphrastic causatives. In Stefan Th. Gries and Anatol Stefanowitsch (eds.), Corpora in cognitive linguistics: corpus-based approaches to syntax and lexis, 193-223. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
- 2004. Hollmann, Willem B. The iconicity of complementation in Present-day English causatives. In Constantino Maeder, Olga Fischer,and William J. Herlofsky (eds.), Outside-in - inside-out. Iconicity in language and literature Vol. 4, 287-306. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
PhD thesis:
- 2003. Hollmann, Willem B. Synchrony and diachrony of English periphrastic causatives: a cognitive perspective. Ph.D. dissertation. Manchester: University of Manchester.
Other:
- I reviewed 5 books on language change, grammar, and variation in the English language for the Times Higher Education textbook guide 22 May 2008. The books were Aarts, Bas (2007) Syntactic gradience: the nature of grammatical indeterminacy; Britain, David, ed.(2007) Language in the British isles; Carnie, Andrew (2007) Constituent structure; Denison, David & Richard M. Hogg, eds. (2006) A history of the English language; Heine, Bernd & Tania Kuteva (2007) The genesis of grammar: a reconstruction. The reviews can be downloaded here.
Teaching
I convene the following undergraduate modules: LING 103 Linguistics, LING 203 English Sounds and Structures (term 1, in which we focus on grammar), LING 305 Topics in Linguistic Theory (term 1, in which we focus on cognitive linguistics), LING 313 Language Change in English and Beyond, and LING 315 Forensic Linguistics. At postgraduate level I teach LING 490 English Grammar, and also run modules on English grammar for our Hong Kong and MA in English Language by Distance programmes.
Administration
My main admin responsibility in the Department is Director of Studies for Part II. Outside the Department, I am very active in relation to linguistics and education/pedagogy. On the national level, I'm a member of the LAGB's Education Committee, the Committee for Linguistics in Education (CLIE), and the UK Linguistics Olympiad committee (UKLO).
Associated Keywords: Cognitive linguistics, Corpus linguistics, Dialect, Dialectology, English grammar, English language, History of English, Language change, Language typology, Linguistics, Semantics, Sociolinguistics
View all research activities, ePrints, news and events associated with Willem Hollmann.