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Sebastian Hoffmann
 Dr. Sebastian Hoffmann

Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter

Courses taught in SS 2006
 
Announcement 
 From 1 September 2006 onwards, I will be working as a Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University. My new e-mail address is s.hoffmann@lancs.ac.uk.
My successors as study abroad coordinators are Sarah Chevalier (September to October 2006 only) and Anja Janoschka (from November 2006 onwards).
 
Portrait 
Research Interests 
 Sebastian Hoffmann received his degree from the University of Zurich, where he also worked for several years as a research assistant to Prof. Gunnel Tottie. His current position as wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter involves both research and teaching. In addition, he coordinates the study-abroad programs available at the English department. He is a member of the advisory board of ICAME, the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English.

As a dedicated corpus linguist, his research predominantly focuses on the application of usage-based approaches to the study of language. He is particularly interested in syntactic change, aspects of fixedness (e.g. collocations) and the interplay between corpus data and language theory. His PhD, which investigates the grammaticalization of complex prepositions on the basis of large amounts of authentic language data, won the dissertation award of the German Association for English Studies (Anglistenverband) in 2005. A second major area of his research is corpus linguistic methodology. In this context, he is particularly interested in the methodological and practical issues involved in using Internet-based data for corpus linguistic analyses.

Sebastian Hoffmann is a co-author of BNCweb, a user-friendly web-interface to the British National Corpus.
One of his hobbies is photography and he has documented a number of corpus linguistics conferences.
 
Bibliography 
 Books:

2005. Grammaticalization and English Complex Prepositions. A Corpus-Based Study. London: Routledge.

Papers:

In press. "Processing Internet-Derived Text - Creating a Corpus of Usenet Messages." (To appear in Journal of Literary and Linguistic Computing.)

In press. "Tag Questions in Early and Late Modern English" (To appear in Anglistik 17:2.)

In press. "From Web-Page to Mega-Corpus: The CNN Transcripts." In: Marianne Hundt, Nadja Nesselhauf and Carolin Biewer (eds.) Corpus Linguistics and the Web. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

2004. "Are Low-Frequency Complex Prepositions Grammaticalized? On the Limits of Corpus Data - and the Importance of Intuition." In: Hans Lindquist & Christian Mair (eds.). Corpus Approaches to Grammaticalization in English. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. 171-210.

2004. " Using the OED Quotations Database as a Corpus - a Linguistic Appraisal." ICAME Journal 28. 17-30.

2002. "In (Hot) Pursuit of Data: Complex Prepositions in Late Modern English." In: Pam Peters, Peter Collins, & Adam Smith (eds.). New Frontiers of Corpus Research. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 127-146.

With collaborators:

Hoffmann, Sebastian & Stefan Evert. 2006. "BNCweb (CQP-Edition) - The Marriage of Two Corpus Tools." In: Sabine Braun, Kurt Kohn & Joybrato Mukherjee (eds.) Corpus Technology and Language Pedagogy: New Resources, New Tools, New Methods. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 177-195.

Hoffmann, Sebastian, Hans Martin Lehmann & Gunnel Tottie. 2002. "The Student as Corpus Linguist." In: Guy Aston and Lou Burnard (eds.). Corpora in the Description and Teaching of English. Bologna: CLUEB. 118-32.

Hoffmann, Sebastian & Hans Martin Lehmann. 2000. "Collocational Evidence from the British National Corpus." In: John Kirk (ed.). Corpora Galore: Analysis and Techniques in Describing English. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 17-32.

Hoffmann, Sebastian & Joybrato Mukherjee. Forthcoming. "Ditransitive verbs in Indian English and British English: a corpus-linguistic study".

Lehmann Hans-Martin, Peter Schneider & Sebastian Hoffmann. 2000. "BNCweb." In: John Kirk (ed.). Corpora Galore: Analysis and Techniques in Describing English. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 259-266.

Locher, Miriam A. & Sebastian Hoffmann. 2006. "Constructing the Identity of an Advice-Giver in an American Internet Advice Column." Text & Talk 26:1. 69-106.

Mukherjee, Joybrato & Sebastian Hoffmann. 2006. "Describing Verb-Complementational Profiles of New Englishes: A Pilot Study of Indian English." English World-Wide 27:2. 147-73.

Tottie, Gunnel & Sebastian Hoffmann. 2001. "Based on: From Dangling Participle to Complex Preposition." In: Karin Aijmer (ed.) Studies in English Linguistics. Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. 1-12.

Tottie, Gunnel & Sebastian Hoffmann. In press. "Tag questions in British and American English." (To appear in Journal of English Linguistics 34:4.)

Reviews:

Smitterberg, Erik. 2005. "The Progressive in 19th-Century English." (To appear in Journal of Historical Pragmatics 8:1.)

Electronic publications:

BNCweb Manual
A detailed description of BNCweb, with examples and methodological tips (together with Ylva Berglund, Oxford University, David Lee, Nagoya University of Commerce & Business, and Nicholas Smith, Lancaster University).

Unpublished manuscripts:

Tottie, Gunnel, Sebastian Hoffmann & Hans Martin Lehmann. 1999. "Bigger is Better. Using the British National Corpus for Undergraduate Term Papers."