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:

(Socio)Linguistic Effects across Political Borders

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

Morpho-syntactic variation and change

Integrating syntactic theory into variationist analysis of morpho-syntactic phenomena to understand the underlying structure of variation and the processes of change

  • Expires after: 01-01-2200
  • Keywords: Syntax,Variation,Language Change

Discourse-pragmatic variation and change

Variation and change in the use of discourse-pragmatic features such as question tags; discourse pragmatic effects in relation to syntactic phenomena

  • Expires after: 01-01-2200
  • Keywords: Discourse-pragmatic,Variation,Language Change

19c grammars and grammar writing

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

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

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.

Computational approaches to linguistic variability

I'm interested in how computational methods and quantitative analyses can assist in uncovering mechanisms of language change as well as patterns of linguistic variability or issues for learners.

  • Expires after: 01-01-2026
  • Keywords: Natural Language Processing,Adjective Amplification,Learner Speech,Word Embeddings,Vulgarity

Geospatial Linguistics

Modelling language variation and change in local populations using geo-referenced social media language data

  • Expires after: 01-10-2025
  • Keywords: Geographical Variation,Language Change,Variationist Linguistics,Sociolinguistics,Online Language

Weak verbs in old Northumbrian

My PhD project investigates the old Northumbrian weak verbal paradigm, specifically the morphology of weak verbs 2. Data collected from the interlinear glosses to the Lindisfarne & Rushworth Gospels.

  • Expires after: 30-04-2025
  • Keywords: Old English,Language Contact,English Historical Linguistics,Diachronic Linguistics,Historical Sociolinguistics,Language Change,Mixed-Effects Modelling,Morphology,Middle English,History Of English,Philology,Sociolinguistics,Quantitative Methods