Current Research Interests

• Foreign Language Development: Exploring how we learn new languages, with a focus on Spanish University learners of English.
• Corpus Linguistics: Exploring new ways to extract meaningful patterns from collections of texts.
• Corpus Annotation Tools: Tools for annotating text and allowing the patterns of text to be explored (see here).
• Dynamic modelling of interaction: Modelling the structure of human interaction, including exchange (conversation) structure and task (generic) structure, assuming a dynamic approach.
• Dynamic Context: exploring how the context of situation evolves as the text (spoken or written) unfolds.
• Linguistic Architecture: Exploring the underlying premises within the Systemic Functional Linguistic Model to identify the inherent assumptions, and what would change if we vary those assumptions.

Past Research Interests

• Text Generation: Composing whole texts from underlying representation (relational databases, knowledge representation language, etc. I have an interst in dynamic hypertext generation, as realised in the ILEX project.
• Sentence Generation: Generating individual sentences from a semantic specification, paying regard to event semantics, speech act, reference, thematic development, etc.
• Sentence Analysis: Analysis of sentences in terms of both syntactic structure (using Systemic Functional Grammar) and also to a semantic level (event structure).
• Knowledge Representation: Representation of conceptual and linguistic data using knowledge representation formalisms. WAG includes a systemic-based KRL.
• Systemic Formalism: Using the Systemic formalism to model all information (language, behaviour, knowledge, etc.). Notion of strata, inter-stratal mapping. Systemics as a knowledge-representation language.