Functional and Cognitive Linguistics: English, Spanish, Typology

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Coordinator


Bert Cornillie


Research


This research unit consists of two different research groups that are active in the domains of English and Spanish linguistics and typology. They share a general functional/cognitive approach to the study of lexical and grammatical meaning, which is reflected by their work in the following focal areas of research:


Theoretical and methodological


  • functional and cognitive approaches to grammatical constructions and discourse phenomena

  • grammaticalization, ‘emergent’ discourse grammar, and the steering role of pragmatic principles

  • cognitive semantics

  • the interaction between grammatical and lexical, especially collocational, patterns

  • the study of syntactic and discursive patterns of variation 

  • descriptive-analytical, comparative corpus research

  • from a language internal (synchronic and diachronic) and cross-linguistic (contrastive and typological) perspective

Descriptive


  • constructional semantics (e.g. complement constructions, semantic roles in the clause, head and modifiers in the noun phrase, and the integration of all these in nominalizations)

  • tense system, aspect, modality

  • clause combining (e.g. conditional clauses, causality, speech or thought representation)

  • the cognitive-semantic structure of prepositions, focus-markers, etc.

  • ‘interpersonal’ systems (e.g. modality, speech function, grounding)

  • discourse phenomena (word order as well as clitics, nominal reference, etc.)


This research unit aligns itself with the international functional and cognitive research community, in which it is emphasized that grammatical categories form semiotic units of form and meaning. Grammaticalisation and emergent discourse grammar are considered as highly relevant analytical frameworks. Attention also goes to training of future researchers and translation of linguistic concepts to educational applications.

From this theoretical and methodological perspective, research has been carried out into the semantics of clausal constructions (e.g. causal, reflexive, ‘middle’) in Spanish and English, as well as of the English verb phrase (tense system, modality). In addition, a general model of clause combining has been developed, with attention to different levels of interpretation. From a language-internal and a typological perspective, the following new focal areas are currently being developed: modality, the noun phrase, nominalisation, verb-particle combinations, and further aspects of clause combining, such as speech or thought representation and complementation.


The research unit consists of 2 research groups:



Staff


Contact


Coordinator:

Bert Cornillie


Administrative office:

Veerle Hompes
Faculteit Letteren
Subfaculteit Taalkunde; department of Linguistics
Blijde Inkomststraat 21, bus 3308
3000 Leuven
t: 00 32 16 32 50 30
f: 00 32 16 32 47 67
email veerle.hompes@arts.kuleuven.be