Books by Thomas Hoffmann
The Cognitive Foundation Of Post-colonial Englishes: Construction Grammar As The Cognitive Theory for the Dynamic Model, 2021
Varieties of English are spoken all over the world from Africa to Asia, from Europe to America. I... more Varieties of English are spoken all over the world from Africa to Asia, from Europe to America. In addition to its use as a foreign language, English in many of these countries is a first or second language variety that initially arose in a colonial setting. Currently, the most influential sociolinguistic model for the evolution of these 'Post-Colonial Englishes' is the Dynamic Model. In this Element, I outline how Construction Grammar, the most prominent cognitive syntactic theory, can provide a cognitive foundation for the assumptions made by the Dynamic Model. As I shall argue, Construction Grammar naturally complements the Dynamic Model and, in addition to that, a 'Constructionist Grammar Approach to the Dynamic Model' approach generates new research questions concerning the productivity of syntactic patterns across Dynamic Model phases.
opulismus: Kontroversen und Perspektiven – Ein wissenschaftliches Gesprächsangebot, 2020
Kaum ein Begriff wurde in den letzten Jahren so oft und kontrovers diskutiert wie „Populismus“. D... more Kaum ein Begriff wurde in den letzten Jahren so oft und kontrovers diskutiert wie „Populismus“. Dabei beginnt der Konflikt bereits bei der Suche nach einer gültigen Definition, denn häufig endet dieses Unterfangen auch unter Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern in gegenseitigen Vorwürfen, selbst populistisch zu sein. Der Ausdruck wird einerseits genutzt, um dem politischen "Gegner" eine verzerrte und simplifizierte Argumentationsweise zu attestieren. Gleichzeitig gilt er anderseits als inflationär gebrauchtes Totschlagargument, um den Gegenspieler zu diskreditieren, wenn keine konstruktiven und stichhaltigen Gegenargumente vorgebracht werden können. So handelt es sich letztlich um ein oft unspezifisch benutztes Schlagwort, dessen Verwendung von der Beschreibung einer Form der politischen Rhetorik bis hin zur Anprangerung rassistischer und antidemokratischer Weltanschauungen reichen kann. Der vorliegende Band will sich daher mit diesem Phänomen interdisziplinär auseinandersetzen und sich ihm aus historischer und politischer, aber auch aus sprachwissenschaftlicher sowie theologischer Perspektive nähern. Dabei können auch hier keine absoluten Antworten geliefert werden, sondern letztlich nur ein wissenschaftliches Diskussionsangebot – alles andere wäre Populismus.
One of the most intriguing features of languages is that speakers can produce novel grammatical u... more One of the most intriguing features of languages is that speakers can produce novel grammatical utterances that they have never heard before. Consequently, most linguists agree that the mental grammars of speakers are complex systems that must be more abstract than the input they are exposed to. Yet, linguists differ as to how general and abstract speakers' mental representations have to be to allow this grammatical creativity. This book addresses this issue by empirically investigating one specific construction, English comparative correlatives (e.g., the more you eat, the fatter you get). Drawing on authentic corpus data from Old English to Present-day English varieties around the world, it shows how input frequency and domain-general cognitive principles affect the complex mental network of constructions that underlies speakers' linguistic behaviour. This pioneering and original study will be of interest to scholars and students of English syntax and English historical linguistics.
This two-part volume provides a collection of 27 linguistic studies and contributions that shed l... more This two-part volume provides a collection of 27 linguistic studies and contributions that shed light on the evolution of different Englishes world-wide (varieties, learner Englishes, dialects, creoles) from a broad spectrum of different perspectives, including both synchronic and diachronic approaches. What makes the volume unique is that it is the first-ever contribution to the field which includes a section exclusively commited towards testing, discussing and refining Schneider’s (2007) Dynamic Model against recent realities of English world-wide (Part 1). These realities include a wide variety of case studies ranging from regions (socio)linguistically as diverse as South Africa, the Phillipines, Cyprus or Germany. Part 2 goes beyond the Dynamic Model and offers both empirical and theoretical perspectives on the evolution of World Englishes. In doing so, it provides contributions with a theoretical focus on the topic as well as cross-varietal accounts; it sheds light on individual Englishes from different geographical regions and offers new perspectives on “old” varieties.
Preposition placement, the competition between preposition stranding (What is he talking about?) ... more Preposition placement, the competition between preposition stranding (What is he talking about?) and pied-piping (About what is he talking?), is one of the most interesting areas of syntactic variation in English. This is the first book to investigate preposition placement across all types of clauses that license it, such as questions, exclamations and wh-clauses, and those which exhibit categorical stranding, such as non-wh relative clauses, comparatives, and passives. Drawing on over 100 authentic examples from both first-language (English) and second-language (Kenyan) data, it combines experimental and corpus-based approaches to provide a full grammatical account of preposition placement in both varieties of English. Although written within the usage-based construction grammar framework, the results are presented in theory-neutral terminology, making them accessible to researchers from all syntactic schools. This pioneering volume will be of interest not only to syntacticians, but also second language researchers and those working on variation in English.
The last decade has seen a rise in popularity in construction-based approaches to grammar. The va... more The last decade has seen a rise in popularity in construction-based approaches to grammar. The various approaches within the rubric 'construction grammar' all see language as a network of constructions-pairings of form and meaning. Construction Grammar, as a kind of cognitive linguistics, differs significantly from mainstream generative grammar as espoused by Chomsky and his followers. Advocates of Construction Grammar see it as a psychologically plausible theory of human language. As such, it is capable of providing a principled account of language acquisition, language variation and language change. Research in Construction Grammar also includes multidisciplinary cognitive studies in psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and computational linguistics.
The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar is the first authoritative reference work solely dedicated to Construction Grammar. Divided into five sections, the book will be an invaluable resource that students and scholars alike can turn to for a comprehensive account of current work on Construction Grammar, its theoretical foundations, and its applications to and relationship with other kinds of linguistic enquiry.
World Englishes is a vibrant research field that has attracted scholars from many different lingu... more World Englishes is a vibrant research field that has attracted scholars from many different linguistic subdisciplines. Emphasizing the common ground of all research on World Englishes, the 22 articles in this collected volume, selected from more than a hundred papers presented at the 2007 conference of the International Association for World Englishes in Regensburg, cover a broad range of topics which together reflect the state of the art of research in this field. The volume focuses on regions as diverse as Africa, the Caribbean, the Antipodes and Asia, but also promotes a globally comparative perspective by analyzing selected characteristics of the English language across a wide range of varieties. Methodologically, a number of different approaches are applied, including corpus linguistic studies, socio-phonetics as well as historical discourse analysis. Due to its wide scope, the book is of interest not only to World Englishes scholars but also to sociolinguists as well as applied, contact or corpus linguists.
Papers by Thomas Hoffmann
Cognitive Linguistics, 2011
Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 2006
Abstract While McEnery and Wilson (1996: 16) argue for a combination of introspection and corpus ... more Abstract While McEnery and Wilson (1996: 16) argue for a combination of introspection and corpus data, many linguists still only draw on either of the two data sources. In this article I will show that treating the two types of data as corroborating evidence allows a far more detailed analysis of the categorical and variable constraints governing syntactic variation than the two types of data would have allowed individually. To illustrate this point, I will present the results of a case study on preposition placement in English relative clauses which combines a statistical corpus analysis and a magnitude estimation grammaticality judgement experiment.
Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 2007
There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. Ϫ William Shakespeare Hamlet 2.2.25... more There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. Ϫ William Shakespeare Hamlet 2.2.250Ϫ1 Good is good and bad is bad But you don't know which one you had Ϫ Sheryl Crow Good is Good
As we show in this paper, football chants can be analysed as constructions, i.e. arbitrary form-m... more As we show in this paper, football chants can be analysed as constructions, i.e. arbitrary form-meaning pairings. Beyond that, however, we also argue that they exhibit many physical as well as social contextual usage constraints that are also of great importance for usage-based Construction Grammar analyses in general. [Please note that despite focussing on English chants, this paper is currently available in German only. An extended English version will follow later this year.] Gebrauchsbasierte Ansätze innerhalb der Konstruktionsgrammatik betonen stets die detaillierten mentalen Repräsentationen, die aus der Begegnung mit natürlichsprachlichen Stimuli entstehen. Obwohl die Soziolinguistik immer wieder die zentrale Rolle sozialer und physischer Kontextfaktoren in konkreten Sprechsituationen hervorgehoben hat, glauben wir, dass diesen in der gebrauchsbasierten Konstruktionsgrammatik bisher nicht genug Beachtung geschenkt wurde. In diesem Artikel werden wir zum einen zeigen, dass Fußballgesänge gewinnbringend als linguistische Konstruktionen analysiert werden können. Zum anderen werden wir aber auch argumentieren, dass integrale Bestandteile dieser Fußballgesangkonstruktionen, i.e. ihre sozialen und kontextuellen Gebrauchsbedingungen, auch von entscheidender Bedeutung für die Analyse anderer Konstruktionen sind. Aus diesem Grund plädieren wir für eine stärkere Betonung dieser Aspekte in zukünftigen gebrauchsbasierten Analysen.
Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association, 2022
Humans are an incredibly creative species-our minds have evolved to a degree that has enabled us ... more Humans are an incredibly creative species-our minds have evolved to a degree that has enabled us to think original thoughts and come up with novel solutions to a great number of problems. One particular domain of human cognition that has recently received considerable attention is linguistic creativity. The present contribution will take a closer look at how Construction Grammar can account for various types of verbal creativity. In addition to this, it will also explore the implications of creative utterances for Construction Grammar as a mental theory of language.
World Englishes and Creole Languages Today. Vol. 1: The Schneiderian Thinking, 2022
Edgar Schneider's Dynamic Model is currently the most influential sociolinguistic model for the e... more Edgar Schneider's Dynamic Model is currently the most influential sociolinguistic model for the evolution of Post-Colonial Englishes around the world. In this paper, we outline how Construction Grammar, the most prominent cognitive syntactic theory, can provide a cognitive foundation for the assumptions made by the Dynamic Model.
Ambivalenzen im Verhältnis von Populismus und Christentum-Kontroversen und theologische Klärungsv... more Ambivalenzen im Verhältnis von Populismus und Christentum-Kontroversen und theologische Klärungsversuche 1. [Reinhard] Appel sei ein "Populist", nimmt dieser als Kompliment.
Belgian Journal of Linguistics, Volume 34 (2020)
One of the hallmarks of scientific theories is their falsifiability, i.e. the fact that they make... more One of the hallmarks of scientific theories is their falsifiability, i.e. the fact that they make predictions that can objectively be proven wrong. Thus, it is paramount that researchers, including linguists, are able to state what kind of evidence would lead them to abandon their scientific theory. Yet, researchers just like all other human beings are susceptible to confirmation bias, i.e. the fact that they only seek evidence that supports their existing views. In this squib, I will raise the question whether Construction Grammar can become a falsifiable theory.
"Recently, the idea that all grammatical, including syntacti... more "Recently, the idea that all grammatical, including syntactic, knowledge, is stored mentally as constructions has become immensely popular (cf. e.g. Fillmore & Kay 1996; Croft 2001; Goldberg 2003). In this article, I demonstrate how the analysis of various sources of empirical data can offer important insights into the mental organization of the linguistic knowledge of a speaker of English, concerning the number as well as the internal structure of constructions. Please find below a pre-publication draft of the paper."
Schneider’s Dynamic Model (2007) predicts that it is the lexicon-syntax interface that exhibits f... more Schneider’s Dynamic Model (2007) predicts that it is the lexicon-syntax interface that exhibits first traces of the emergence of characteristic structural innovations during the phase of Nativization. In this paper, I will show how a Construction Grammar approach provides a cognitive explanation for this phenomenon. I will then illustrate the advantages of a Construction Grammar analysis by focussing on Comparative Correlative (CC) constructions (e.g. The higher the price is, the more interesting the product is.; cf. Fillmore et al. 1988; Sag 2010). As the statistical analysis of data from various corpora from the International Corpus of English project show, all varieties exhibit similar processing effects, but differ greatly with respect to their reliance on partly substantive, partly schematic meso-constructions.
Varieties of English are spoken all over the world from Africa to Asia, from Europe to America. I... more Varieties of English are spoken all over the world from Africa to Asia, from Europe to America. In addition to its use as a foreign language, English in many of these countries is a first or second language variety that initially arose in a colonial setting. Currently, the most influential sociolinguistic model for the evolution of these 'Post-Colonial Englishes' is the Dynamic Model. In this Element, I outline how Construction Grammar, the most prominent cognitive syntactic theory, can provide a cognitive foundation for the assumptions made by the Dynamic Model. As I shall argue, Construction Grammar naturally complements the Dynamic Model and, in addition to that, a 'Constructionist Grammar Approach to the Dynamic Model' approach generates new research questions concerning the productivity of syntactic patterns across Dynamic Model phases.
Constructional Approaches to Syntactic Structures in German
Filler-Gap constructions (Sag 2010) are usually treated as a set of abstract constructions that i... more Filler-Gap constructions (Sag 2010) are usually treated as a set of abstract constructions that interact with independent lexical and Argument Structure constructions to license specific constructs. In this paper, I will look at Comparative Correlative (CC) constructions (the more you eat, the fatter you get / je mehr Du isst, desto dicker wirst Du) in German and English and show that corpus data indicate that such a view is untenable for these peripheral members of the Filler-Gap construction family. On top of that, I will address the question as to how general the mental representations of CC constructions are and what the different networks of these constructions in German and English looks like.
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Books by Thomas Hoffmann
The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar is the first authoritative reference work solely dedicated to Construction Grammar. Divided into five sections, the book will be an invaluable resource that students and scholars alike can turn to for a comprehensive account of current work on Construction Grammar, its theoretical foundations, and its applications to and relationship with other kinds of linguistic enquiry.
Papers by Thomas Hoffmann
The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar is the first authoritative reference work solely dedicated to Construction Grammar. Divided into five sections, the book will be an invaluable resource that students and scholars alike can turn to for a comprehensive account of current work on Construction Grammar, its theoretical foundations, and its applications to and relationship with other kinds of linguistic enquiry.
In this talk, I discuss the scientific background to the linguistic fingerprint (the unique idiolect of an individual) and show why currently - despite claims to the contrary made by self-appointed 'experts' - linguists can still not identify linguistic fingerprints.
As part of this, I give an overview of classic approaches to authorship and stylometry as well as modern machine-learning approaches. Finally, I present a sample study of a well-known historical case (the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby in 1932) to illustrate the applications and limits of modern Forensic Linguistics.
(1) FORM: [are you [FOOTBALL TEAM]1
are you [FOOTBALL TEAM]1
are you [FOOTBALL TEAM]1 in disguise,
are you [FOOTBALL TEAM]1 in disguise]_chant
MEANING: ‘our current opponent play like X1
and X1 is a crap football team’
The form part has the substantive elements [are you] and [in disguise] as well as a slot for the name of a football team that is repeated four times. Another property of the construction’s form, not shown in (1), is that it has a fixed tune associated with it (the religious hymn ‘Cwm Rhondda’, or ‘Bread of Heaven’; Shaw 2010: 7). Interestingly, as indexed on the meaning level of the construction, the football team that is inserted in the schematic slot is not the name of the current opponent. Thus, when Northern Ireland played Spain in a friendly match in 2009, the Irish fans sung ‘Are you England, are you England, are you England in disguise, are you England in disguise’. In contrast to this, Arsenal fans sing ‘Are you Tottenham,…’ when playing Liverpool.
Drawing on a large on-line collection of British football chants (www.footballchants.org), we shall argue that the linguistic investigation of football chants yields interesting insights into spontaneous, non-ephemeral constructional change. As our data show, many football chants exhibit signs of constructionalization (cf. e.g. Rostila 2006; Noël 2007; Trousdale 2008) with input constructions undergoing changes on their form as well as meaning level. The changes on the formal level are constrained by rhythmic, metric as well as situational-contextual, social factors (cf. Kopiez and Brink 31999). On top of that, the dissemination of chants across supporters (of the same as well as rival teams) allows for an investigation of Andersen’s (2008: 32) postulated cycle of innovation and actualization within and across speakers of a community. Moreover, our study contributes to the growing body on the role of context in constructional change (cf. e.g. Bergs and Diewald 2009) as we highlight the role of shared collective cultural knowledge (most chants derive from either church songs or pop tunes), the limited number of pragmatic speech acts expressed (such as praise of one’s own team or abuse of the opponent; cf. Morris 1981) and the persistence of cultural stereotypes (concerning e.g. the players ethnicity).
REFERENCES
Andersen, Henning. 2008. “Grammaticalization in a speaker-oriented theory of change”. In: Eythórsson Thórhallur, ed. Grammatical change and lnguistic theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 11–44.
Bergs, Alexander & Gabriele Diewald, eds. 2008. Constructions and language change. (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 194). Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Bergs, Alexander and Diewald, Gabriele, eds. 2009. Contexts and constructions. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Croft, William. 2000. Explaining language change: An evolutionary approach. London: Longman.
Kopiez, Reinhard and Guido Brink. 31999. Fussball-Fangesänge: Eine Fanomenologie. Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann.
Morris, Desmond. 1981. The Soccer Tribe. Jonathan Cape, London.
Noël, Dirk. 2007. “Diachronic construction grammar and grammaticalization theory”. Functions of Language 14(2): 177–202.
Rostila, Jouni. 2006. “Storage as a way to grammaticalization”. Constructions 2006/1. [http://elanguage.net/journals/index.php/constructions/index].
Shaw, Alex (2010). Shall we sing a song for you? The good, the bad and the downright offensive - Britain’s favourite football chants. John Blake.
Trousdale, Graeme. 2008. “Constructions in grammaticalization and lexicalization: Evidence from the history of a composite predicate construction in the history of English”. In Graeme Trousdale & Nikolas Gisborne (eds.), Constructional approaches to English grammar (Topics in English Linguistics 57). Berlin & New York: Mouton
As the data show, English CCs exhibit a greater tendency for parallel structures in C1 and C2 (with respect to the syntactic form of the comparative phrase as well as length (in number of words). In contrast to this, German, which employs more overt marking to differentiate between the two clauses (with C1 being introduced by je and verb-final positioning and C2 being introduced by desto or um so and V2 word order) has more instances of reversed C2C1 structures (with um so in the first clause and V-final word order: [daß die Ereignisse der deutschen Geschichte … um so interessanter werden,]C2 [je näher sie der Gegenwart stehen.]C1 ‘that the events of German history become (the) more interesting, the closer to present day they take place.] LIMAS File 012 13.04 l.078). Moreover, contra Den Dikken (2005: 503) both languages allow double-bind structures (Franck 1985) such as (4) and (5) in which the second clause C2 functions as the dependent variable (cf. Goldberg 2003: 220) to C1 as well as the independent variable to C3:
(4) And [the more opaque that atmosphere is]C1,
[the less conductive it is]C2
[the bigger the temperature difference you need to cross it]C3
(ICE-GB:S2A-043)
(5) [Je sorgfältiger der Fragebogen durchstrukturiert (standardisiert) ist,]C1
[desto besser lassen sich die Antworten zählen und vergleichen,]C2
[desto näher kommt der Fragebogen einem exakten Meßinstrument.]C3
(Limas File 114 08.22 l. 132)
[The more carefully the questionnaire is structured (standardized)]C1
[the better the answers can be counted and compared,]C2
[the more the questionnaire becomes an exact measurement device]C3
Finally, on top of phenomena such as the relative frequency of BE-/SEIN-deletion, subject-auxiliary inversion in English CCs or the grammaticality of that-/dass-complementizer in C1 and C2, we also discuss how all these findings can be modelled within a Sign-based Construction Grammar approach that takes into account usage-based information.
REFERENCES
Borsley, R. D. 2004. “An approach to English comparative correlatives”. In Stephan Müller, ed. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Stanford: CSLI Publications, 70−92.
Culicover, P. W. & R. Jackendoff. 1999. “The view from the periphery: The English comparative correlative”. Linguistic Inquiry 30, 543−71.
Den Dikken, M. 2005. “Comparative correlatives comparatively”. Linguistic Inquiry 36, 497−32.
Fillmore, Ch., P. Kay and M.C. O’Connor. 1988. “Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: The case of let alone”. Language 64, 501−38.
Franck, D. 1985. “Sentences in conversational turns. A case of syntactic 'double bind'”. In: M. Dascal, ed. Dialogue. An interdisciplinary approach. Amsterdam: 233-45.
Goldberg, A.E. 2003. “Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language”. TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences 7: 219-24.
McCawley, J.D. 1988. “The comparative conditional construction in English, German, and Chinese”. Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS) 14, 176−87.
Sag, Ivan A. 2010. English Filler-Gap Constructions. Language 86.3: 486-545.
Zeldes, A. 2011. "On the Productivity and Variability of the Slots in German Comparative Correlative Constructions". In: M. Konopka, J. Kubczak, Ch. Mair, F. Štícha & U.H. Waßner, eds. Grammar & Corpora / Grammatik und Korpora 2009. Third International Conference / Dritte Internationale Konferenz, Mannheim, 22.-24.09.2009. Tübingen: Narr, 429-49.
YouTube: https://youtu.be/88SdqRwLWHs
that summarizes the first chapter of my textbook and discusses the solutions to the exercises of the chapter:
Thomas Hoffmann. 2022. Construction Grammar: The Structure of English. (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
https://www.cambridge.org/highereducation/books/construction-grammar/D0577C9957038E384A2A1F04E6A73B7E#overview
https://youtu.be/JOSCpjPQqI8
In the video, I show what a Constructionist Approach to Syntactic Analysis looks like. How can we represent all of the constructions that combine into a singe sentence? CASA adopts a pedagogical approach that should allow students to quickly move on to analyzing authentic, complex sentences.
For further information, cf.:
Herbst, Thomas and Thomas Hoffmann. 2018. Construction Grammar for students: A Constructionist Approach to Syntactic Analysis (CASA). Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association 6(1): 197–218.
https://youtu.be/jN06vdWgq2o
Lecture notes for the open access video lecture "Construction Grammar":
https://youtu.be/0FcVdSn6jGA
YouTube link:
https://youtu.be/JKK7AVsfUqc
YouTube link:
https://youtu.be/sAim5uBesDk
YouTube link: https://youtu.be/8E086aKUr7E
https://youtu.be/j19AX8KBlRM