Kaltenböck, Gunther, Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr.phil. MA

I hold an MA in English and French Language and Literature (University of Vienna), an MA in Modern English Language (University of London, UCL) and a PhD in English Linguistics (University of Vienna) and currently work as a Professor of English Linguistics at the Karl-Franzens University of Graz. Previously, I worked as a Senior Scientist and later as a Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Vienna, as a research fellow at the Survey of English Usage at University College London and as a Visiting Professor at the University of Lille.

My main research interests lie in the following three domains:

• Cognitive-Functional Grammar: I am particularly interested in the communicative functions of grammatical structures, their assumed cognitive representations and ways of modelling grammar especially within the frameworks of Usage-based Grammar and Construction Grammar. A particular focus here is on the use and modelling of so-called extra-clausal constituents or theticals. Some publications relating to this field are co-edited volumes, such as New approaches to hedging (2011, Emerald), Outside the clause (2016, Benjamins) and Insubordination: theoretical and empirical issues (2019, de Gruyter) and papers such as “Explaining diverging evidence. The case of clause-initial I think” (2011) and on Complementizer omission in extraposed that-clauses (2006). The concept of Thetical Grammar has been developed in a joint project together with Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva (e.g. 2011. On thetical grammar, Studies in Language 35.4: 848-893).

• Syntactic variation and change: My main interest here is the question of choice that speakers have in the use of closely related constructions, the discourse functions of syntactic variants, and their recent diachronic development, particularly with respect to the process of grammaticalization. Some publications relating to this field are a monograph on It-extraposition and non-extraposition in English (2004, Braumüller), a co-edited volume on Tracing English through time. Explorations in language variation (2007, Braumüller) and various papers e.g. on the "Development of comment clauses" (2013), on "Processibility and syntactic structure: from matrix clause to pragmatic marker" (2015), and "On the evolution of final particles" (2015, with Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva).

• Corpus linguistics: Owing to my predominantly usage-based approach to language and the impact of co(n) text on the use of grammatical constructions, my preferred method is that of quantitative and qualitative corpus analysis. I have also been involved in the parsing of the British component of the International Corpus of English and have published on the use of corpora for language teaching.