drs. A. (Aleth) Bolt

Phone: +31-20-5986227

Personal web page in English
Curriculum Vitae

Research interests

Grammatical metaphors, information packaging, text optimalization, genre, style.

Teaching

2004-2005: Nominaliseringen (Nominalisations)
2003-2004: Tekstanalyse (Discourse analysis)
2003-2004: ACVA (Academic Skills)

Research

In my dissertation project "Grammatical metaphors, text representation and text optimalization", I examine the textual and psychological effects of grammatical metaphors in different genres. Several suggestions have been made in the literature that support the idea that a text becomes more difficult because of metaphorical style. Halliday (1994: 350), for instance, suggests that grammatical metaphors may be intrinsically more complex than their congruent equivalents: "it might be assumed that [grammatical] metaphor, while not inherently value-laden, is nevertheless inherently complex, and that the least metaphorical wording will always be the one that is maximally simple." I try to establish whether grammatical metaphors adversely influence language processing and text comprehension and also whether genre expectations have an impact on the way grammatical metaphors are processed and represented in memory.

Publications

• Bolt, A., & Spooren, W. (2003). De complexiteit van naamwoordstijl: De gesubstantiveerde infinitief experimenteel onderzocht. In L. Van Waes, P. Cuvelier, G. Jacobs & I. De Ridder (Red.), Studies in Taalbeheersing 1 (pp. 71-82)

Other activities

• 9 January 2004: co-organizer 14th Anéla Junior Researchers' Day, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
• 10 January 2003: co-organizer 13th Anéla Junior Researchers' Day, Radbout University Nijmegen (RUN)

Presentations:

• 7 February 2004: TIN-dag 2004. Utrecht University (UU).
  The use and complexity of nominalizations: do they influence what readers recall?
  "Het gebruik en de complexiteit van naamwoordstijl" (verslag van een recall-experiment)
• 4 December 2003: Promovendi Praten (informal Ph.D. presentation series). Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU).
  The meaning-making potential of grammatical metaphors
• 16 April 2003: Linguistics Association of Great Britain spring meeting 2003 (LAGB 2003). University of Sheffield.
  "The complexity of grammatical metaphors"
• 18 December 2002: VIOT 2002). University of Antwerp (UA). 
  The impact of nominalised infinitives on language processing and language comprehension
  "De moeilijkheidsgraad van gesubstantiveerde infinitieven"
• September 2002: research group meeting 'the architecture of the human language faculty'. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU).
  Grammatical metaphors & Text representation