Projects
The interaction between information structure, syntax and semantics: a comparative linguistic and interdisciplinary analysis. KU Leuven
One of the major functions of language is to convey information between speakers and hearers. Speakers have several linguistic means at their disposal to structure the information they want to communicate, e.g. active (Nous avons pris la décision) vs passive sentences (La décision a été prise) refer to the same referential content but the way in which the information is structured differs. Information Structure (IS) is a basic ingredient of ...
Seeing it in color: A usage-based analysis of color names in advertising. KU Leuven
the research group Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Lingusitics,
i.e. a multivariate usage-based grammar approach. This approach tries
to provide a corpus-based,
statisti­cally well-tested description of
multifactorial linguistic phenomena, i.e. phenomena that are
simultaneously determined by semantic, discursive, and ...
Grammaticalization or diffusion: a contrastive study of the mechanisms and factors in the development of English and Dutch infinitives. KU Leuven
A diachronic and synchronic study of the imperative in Dutch, English and German. University of Antwerp
The French verb in a constructional perspective Ghent University
The elaboration of a global construction grammar of the French verb with special attention to (1) the outline of an adequate verbtypology; (2) the analysis of the mechanisms which lay at the basis of the most frequent meaning extensions; (3) a thorough analysis of some specific verbclasses (perception, cognition, transfer and communication).
Argument realisation of experience processes: a synchronic and diachronic account. KU Leuven
Sabbatical Dirk Speelman: Distributional semantics meets Digital Humanities KU Leuven
Recent methodological advances in corpus-based distributional semantics have made it possible to study semantics in new ways and, above all, on a scale that was previously unimaginable, both within earlier theoretical/descriptive and more applied research. Whereas extensive empirical linguistic research previously had to make do with the study of semantics with a rather limited set of instruments, certainly compared to what was available to ...
Current European and Cross-National Comparative Research and Research Actions on Migration (CROSS-MIGRATION). University of Antwerp
Political centralization, economic integration and language evolution in Central Africa: An interdisciplinary approach to the early history of the Kongo kingdom Ghent University
KONGOKING is an interdisciplinary and interuniversity research group which aims at contributing to a better understanding of the origins and early history of the Kongo kingdom. It unites researchers from Ghent University (UGent), Brussels University (ULB) and the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren (RMCA), as well as from several partner institutions in Africa, Europe and the USA.