Linguistics Research
The three chairs in the linguistics section represent distinct yet interconnected research interests that also feed into the wide array of courses we offer:
- Prof. Dr. Stefan Th. Gries, who holds the Chair of Corpus Linguistics (with a focus on quantitative methods), is a quantitative corpus linguist at the intersection of corpus linguistics, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics. In his courses, students learn to use a variety of different statistical methods to investigate linguistic topics. Moreover, his courses are designed to help students understand corpus-linguistic methodology and statistical methods in linguistics. Much of Prof. Gries’ recent work involves the open-source software R which he introduced in his courses. In terms of theory, he is a cognitively oriented usage-/exemplar-based linguist (with an interest in Construction Grammar) in the wider sense of seeking explanations in terms of cognitive processes.
- Prof. Dr. Magnus Huber holds the Chair of English Linguistics and the History of the English Language. The research and courses of his chair cover a wide range of synchronic and diachronic topics and thus deal particularly, but not exclusively, with the descriptive levels of phonetics/phonology, morphology and syntax. Prof. Huber looks at these synchronically and diachronically over the past 1,000 years of the history of the language, from Middle English to Present Day English, and both in standard and non-standard varieties. His research and teaching have a special (but again not exclusive) focus on the subdisciplines of historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and dialectology, varieties of English around the world and pidgin and creole languages. Among his favoured methodologies are variationist and corpus-linguistic approaches as well as qualitative approaches like the analysis of early texts with regard to structural and language sociological features.
- Prof. Dr. Joybrato Mukherjee is on leave until further notice. The research interests of his team members cover English as a World/Second language in general and (South) Asian Englishes in particular as well as corpus linguistics (both as a discipline and as a method and also including fields of application as e.g. in foreign-language teaching). A major part of the research and teaching activities in the “Mukherjee team” fall under the auspices of Dr. Tobias Bernaisch; his research interests include South Asian Englishes and corpus-linguistic methodology, but extend to other areas such as Gender in World Englishes as well. All courses offered by the team members reflect the aforementioned research interests.