Welcome...
I am a philosophically inclined quantitative corpus linguist working from the perspective of a usage-based cognitive construction grammar (quite a mouthful).
My current research is motivated by questions about why grammars are the way they are, why language users tend to exhibit processing difficulties with certain structures (and not others), and how the two questions are interrelated.
My approach to these issues is grounded in the premise that linguistic knowledge is by its very nature probabilistic and analogy-based. From this view, I investigate effects of usage-frequency and cognitive entrenchment on shapes of grammars.
At present, I try and contribute to the success of a DFG-Project that aims at providing A comprehensive survey of major contrasts between English and German.
Methods without theoretical substance can be sterile, representing technical sophistication in isolation, but theories without methodological implications are likely to be little more than idle speculation with minimal empirical import.
- John van Maanen