My main areas of research are linguistic typology, parts-of-speech, lexical semantics (especially nominal aspect and Seinsart) and grammatical theory, in particular semantic and morpho–syntactic parallels between the NP and the sentence within the theoretical framework of Dik’s Functional Grammar and its successor Functional Discourse Grammar (Hengeveld and Mackenzie 2008). I have authored or co-authored papers in these areas for Journal of Linguistics, Journal of Semantics, Linguistics, Studies in Language, Linguistic Typology, Functions of Language, Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, Italian Journal of Linguistics (Rivista di Linguistica), Belgian Journal of Linguistics, Deutsche Sprache as well as various anthologies such as Approaches to the Typology of Word Classes (Vogel and Comrie eds. 2000) and International Handbook of Typology (Haspelmath et al. 2001).

     My book The Noun Phrase (Oxford University Press 2002Hb/2004Pb) investigates noun phrases (NPs) in a representative sample of the world’s languages and proposes a four-layered, semantic model to describe their underlying structure in any language. It examines the semantic and morpho-syntactic properties of the constituents of NPs, and in doing so it shows that the NP word order patterns of any language can be derived from three universal ordering principles. Recently I proposed a five-layered semantic NP structure in an anthology I edited with Daniel García Velasco (Universidad de Oviedo, Spain): The Noun Phrase in Functional Discourse Grammar (Berlin – New York: Mouton de Gruyter).

     My current research is concerned with (formal, semantic, functional) categories, the parts-of-speech hierarchy, the semantics of flexible word classes, the relation between form and function, and various aspects of NPs in Functional Discourse Grammar. At the moment I am editing a volume on flexible word classes (co-editor Eva van Lier, Lancaster University, England UK) for Oxford University Press.

     From 1990 to 1994 I was a core member of the EuroTyp project (funded by the European Science Foundation) and in 1995 I held a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung at the University of Konstanz (Germany). Before coming to the University of Aarhus (Denmark), I was a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin (1997–1999). I hold a BA in Dutch language and literature from the Free University and an MA and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Amsterdam (both in the Netherlands).