Projects

The aim of this study is to make an inventory of what was translated during the abovementioned period and to analyse the role played by the various actors (authors, translators, publishers, literary critics, etc.) of the literary field. An analysis will also be made of the reception of the translations and the resulting image of Dutch literature.

Until recently, Van Ostaijen’s canonical poetry volume Bezette Stad (1921) was primarily seen as a crucial work of experimental avant-garde art. Erik Spinoy’s research aims to show that it is also a passionate comment by Van Ostaijen on the historical context the book refers to, i.e. a comment on the situation in Antwerp and Belgium in 1913-1918, which constitutes the subject matter of the book, and in Berlin in 1920-1921, where he wrote it. Reconstructing this context will lead to a better and considerably richer understanding of the text and of the way Van Ostaijen positions himself as a subject. Particular attention will be given to the political and ideological context and to contemporary entertainment culture as a way of defining his subject position.

This project will investigate how elements with spatial meaning develop into applicatives from a typological and Germanic perspective, with extensions into applied research, viz. translation studies. From a typological perspective, it will examine a new source of applicatives, viz. spatial verb morphology, like associated motion markers and directionals. In doing so, we will adopt a broad definition of applicatives, including also non-direct and valency-rearranging applicatives. We will use a world-wide sample as well as in-depth analysis of text and audio data from a single language (Harakmbut). From a Germanic perspective, we will investigate the well-established adposition-to-applicative pathway on the basis of historical data, adopting a new, valency-centred approach to verb-particle constructions in Dutch and English. Finally, we will also take a contrastive Dutch-English perspective and use translation studies methods to contribute to translator education.

This project investigates the grammatical category of verbal number, and seeks to account for the mechanism of language change through which number marking spreads from the verbal to the nominal domain, using South American languages as a testbed.

This project aims to advance our knowledge of the effects of crosslinguistic influence in both SLA and translation. It more specifically focuses on the use of Dutch compound constructions by young learners of Dutch and novice translators. The central aims of the project are: (i) to investigate language-specific tendencies towards the use of (nominal and adjectival) compounds and their analytic equivalents in Dutch and French; (ii) to compare the use of Dutch compounds by young French-speaking L2 learners of Dutch and young French-Dutch translators (whose L1 is Dutch) in order to gain insight into the respective impact of constructional transfer and priming in SLA and translation; and (iii) to assess the importance of cross-linguistic differences in word-formation for language proficiency.

This project aims to provide an online atlas on regional variation in colloquial German, based on crowdsourcing. The AdA project has been running since 2003. In 12 survey rounds with up to 20,000 participants from all parts of the German language area, data for 616 variation phenomena in current regional language use have been collected and mapped online so far. The focus is primarily on lexis, but also on variation in phonology, morphology and syntax. The 13th survey round starts in June 2021, further surveys are in preparation.

http://www.atlas-alltagssprache.de

Atlas on East Belgian dialects - second part (phonological and morphological maps). In a first part of the project (funded by the German-speaking Community - Robert Möller & Sandra Weber 2013), the data were collected and the lexical maps were published online. The unanalysed data on phonology and morphology are now being processed and mapped.

http://www.cea.ulg.ac.be/dialektatlas/

This project investigates factors that determine the intelligibility of texts in an unknown language that is closely related to a language the reader knows.  Previous studies of word recognition in intercomprehension have shed light primarily on the importance of the type of phonological relations between cognates. The project now focuses on other potentially relevant factors such as neighbourhood and textual context.

This research project focuses on the typological differences existing between French and Dutch as far as the linguistic realization of spatial categories dans relationships are concerned. For this line of research, we have highlighted (i) how these differences explain the learning difficulties of French speakers (Perrez & Lemmens, 2010, Perrez & Lemmens, 2012), (ii) which syntactic and discourse strategies the learners develop to localize entities in space (Perrez & Lemmens, 2018) and (iii) how co-verbal gestures contribute to the construction of spatial events (see also Christina Piot’s doctoral project).

Since 2011, Julien Perrez and political scientist Min Reuchamps have been developing an interdisciplinary research project on the use of conceptual metaphors in political discourse and their impact on citizens’ representations. In 2015, they obtained a 4-year FNRS-PDR grant for a research project entitled ‘A discursive approach of the paradox of federalism in linguistically divided democracies: Diachronic and synchronic analyses of state reforms’ discourses and their impact in Belgium’ [ADAPOF]. The aims of this project were (i) to analyse the metaphors used by various political actors to talk about the concept of federalism and (ii) to study the framing potential of metaphors, looking at how particular metaphors could influence citizens’ political representations and attitudes towards Belgian federalism.

This project involves the documentation and description of Harakmbut, an underdescribed language from the Peruvian Amazon, spoken in the departamentos of Madre de Dios and Cusco. The linguistic description has so far been based on audio recordings made in the native communities of Puerto Luz, San José del Karene and Shintuya, all with native speakers of the Arakmbut/Amarakaeri variety. The description also feeds back into didactic materials used in intercultural education programmes set up by the Peruvian government.

The project focuses on two intermediary groups: foreign publishers on the one hand, and the government institutions that formulate and implement the international literature policy on the other.  Little scientific research is available on the real impact of international literature policies on the selection, production and publication processes of foreign publishers. By piloting a selection of case studies of recently published book translations from Dutch, the project aims to fill this gap.

Kim ANDRINGA and Maud GONNE study the French translation of Lize Spit's novel Het smelt (Débâcle,  Actes Sud, 2020).

Firstly, this project will (re)map the titles translated from the Dutch language area in fourteen countries and language areas, respectively, and supplement them on https://dlbt.univie.ac.at. In parallel, the literary transfer to these countries and language areas will be investigated and described. The results of this research will be presented via the website 'Dutch literature in translation' (DLIT).

Multilingualism is one of the key factors of today’s global society. It is, however, not a recent development, but has a long history in society and in literature. Most of humanity is and has been multilingual. This project examines the long-neglected history of multilingual literature in the 18th and 19th centuries in the so-called German-speaking world. To this end, Jana Mende will model a scalable approach to measure the scale and examine the characteristics of historical multilingual literature and lay the groundwork for a theory of historical multilingualism in literature.

This project sets out to investigate the grammar-discourse interface, focussing on patterns of subordination, coordination and insubordination. That is, it aims to examine how speakers bend the language system’s affordances (i.e. grammar) to new uses in discourse. To this end, it will analyse two distinct data sets in the domain of clause combining which have been found to represent mismatches between discourse and grammar, which are taken as diagnostic of instability at the discourse-grammar interface as well as ongoing change. A first set comprises clauses linked by discourse relational devices, including subordinating and coordinating conjunctions, while a second set includes patterns of adverbial insubordination.

This project investigates nominal expressions from a typological perspective. Languages are traditionally classified as either having classic noun phrases, or as lacking phrasal structure altogether. However, many languages lie in between these two extremes, and have more than one type of nominal construal available. The project aims to develop an empirically more accurate model of the nominal domain, using a broad language sample to investigate the full range of construals languages may have and how they are distributed across different languages. In addition, it will use text materials from a small set of languages to investigate how multiple construals may carve up the nominal domain.

This project uses agent-based modelling to investigate the potential effect of attitudes in World Englishes.

The project investigates the remarkable crosslinguistic variation and intriguing diachronic development of reflexive, reciprocal and middle markers. Its overarching goals are (i) to develop a fine-grained semantic and morphosyntactic typology for all three types of constructions, (ii) to make sense of the latter typology in the light of the former (in accordance with the so-called Principle of Functional Explanation) and (iii) to address the puzzling and so far unresolved question why the grammaticalization of reflexives, reciprocals and middles does not follow strictly unidirectional patterns. From a theoretical viewpoint, the project inscribes itself squarely within the functional-typological tradition of linguistic research, but at the same time aims to bring together the descriptive accuracy of this tradition with the analytical insights and sophisticated grammatical theorization offered by the framework of Functional Discourse Grammar.

This project aims at an in-depth study of a number of underresearched but fundamental aspects of a specific type of language change, i.e. grammaticalization: ‘the change whereby lexical terms and constructions come in certain linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions, and, once grammaticalized, continue to develop new grammatical functions’ (Hopper & Traugott 2003: xv). More precisely, this project wants to zoom in on what happens ‘after’ grammaticalization, as expressions settle into and/or establish a new, grammatical category or paradigm. Diewald & Smirnova (2010) refer to this as the paradigmatic phase. How do grammatical paradigms (e.g. that of auxiliary verbs) emerge in the first place and how do their internal dynamics work? How are relations between competing members of one paradigm (re)defined?

This project focuses on the diachronic development of a set of Enligsh expressions containing a negative determiner and a semiotic noun (e.g. little wonder, no need). Specifically, it looks into the role of negation in the grammaticalization of these structures, which develop modal and mirative meanings over time. It also aims for unified syntagmatic analyses of clausal, adverbial or elliptical expressions containing such strings.