Projects
A comprehensive semantic and formal description of nominal groups that take complement clauses in English: a neglected source of grammaticalization and subjectification processes and locus of synchronic variation. KU Leuven
Het voorgestelde project wil op basis van synchroon en diachroon corpusonderzoek komen tot een omvattende beschrijving van nominale groepen (NGen) die complementzinnen (CZen) nemen in het Engels (Biber et al.1999: 648-656) als onbeschreven bronconstructie voor zeker 3 grammaticalisatie- en subjectificatieprocessen (complexe subordinatoren, modale hulpwerkwoorden en markers). De descriptieve bijdrage van deze 3 casestudys aan ...
Grammaticalization or diffusion: a contrastive study of the mechanisms and factors in the development of English and Dutch infinitives. KU Leuven
Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics (QLVL), Leuven, Functional and Cognitive Linguistics: Grammar and Typology (FunC), Leuven
Hendrik De Smet's postdoctoral research refines the model of diffusion established in his PhD research. First, the implications of the model are examined with respect to our understanding of the architecture of grammatical categories. The model implies that grammatical categories have complex, internally-layered structures. Confirmation of this view is sought in case-studies, such as a synchronic case-study on the structure of the category of ...
The grammaticalisation of the future and conditional tense in the history of Ibero-Romance: a language and dialect contact approach. Ghent University
The development of the future and conditional tense in Castilian – as in Romance in general – has been universally acknowledged as a typical case of grammaticalisation, whereby the two components of the Latin periphrasis [infinitive + HABERE] fused into a synthetic form (cantaré, cantaría). In Old Castilian variation between synthetic forms and analytic forms (cantar lo é, cantar lo ía) can be witnessed, which indicates that the ...
The diachrony of tenses in French. University of Antwerp
The project deals with the evolution and grammaticalization of the conditional tense in French. The objective is three-fold. It first seeks to trace the principal changes affecting the usages of this verb form, notably with respect to its contexts of use and the related interpretations. The second aim is to determine the (grammaticalization) processes accounting for these changes, with a focus on the mechanisms triggering the emergence of new ...