His doctoral dissertation, “Challenges in categorization: Corpus-based studies of adjectival premodifiers in English” was accepted with distinction in November 2016, after which he has continued working as a post-doctoral researcher in the project “Reassessing language change: The challenge of real time”. Vartiainen’s main research interests include corpus linguistics, linguistic categorization and category change, Construction Grammar, lexical semantic change and historical sociolinguistics.
PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher
Room C526, Unioninkatu 40
PL 24, 00014 Helsingin yliopisto, Finland
Phone: +358 (0)50-3185308, 21630
E-mail: turo.vartiainen(at)helsinki.fi
My work has largely focused on the categorization, meaning, synchronic variation and diachronic development of prenominal -ing participles and other adjectival premodifiers. I have recently become interested in Construction Grammar, and in one of my recent publications (published in Journal of English Linguistics in March 2016) I discuss the categorization and development of some -ing and -ed participles from a constructionist perspective.
I am a member of the project Reassessing language change: the challenge of real time, which is funded by the Academy of Finland and led by Professor Terttu Nevalainen. One of our main aims is to compile an online Language Change Database that provides detailed documentation of corpus-based diachronic research of English.
I have also done work on historical sociolinguistics, mainly within the project Language of Evaluation: Constructing the Social Margins of England, 1650–1900. The project was funded by the University of Helsinki (2013–2015) and led by Dr. Minna Nevala.