Timothy Colleman’s research is primarily concerned with the syntax of semantics of schematic grammatical constructions in Dutch and related languages, mostly English and Afrikaans, from a constructionist usage-based perspective. An important part of this research is situated at the intersection of construction grammar, historical linguistics and variationist sociolinguistics, zooming in on patterns of language variation and change in the form and/or meaning of argument structure constructions and other (partially) schematic constructions: which processes and mechanisms of change affect the formal and semantic properties of Dutch, English and Afrikaans constructions and how do these diachronic shifts relate to regional and/or stylistic variation observed in present-day language. He has published extensively on ditransitive constructions and the dative alternation, benefactive constructions, accusative-and-infinitives, the Dutch krijgen-passive, and so on. Other research interests include contact-induced constructional change, evidentiality, morphosyntactic innovations in substandard varieties of (Belgian) Dutch and lexical bias effects in syntactic priming. He is also involved in the ongoing revision of the Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst.
