Synchronic and diachronic linguistics of French, Italian, Spanish and Catalan:

• system linguistics: verbal morpholgy, semantics and syntax (especially aspect and Aktionsart, interactions of mode, tense and aspect, modal uses of the imperfect, verbal periphrases), functional categories in an onomasiological perspective (aspectuality, modality, mirativity)
• internal language history and language change (grammaticalisation theory)
• external language history (standardisation theories, theories and practices of purism)
• variational and contact linguistics (Alguerese, creole languages and creolisation as well as situations of language contact in the Romance Middle Ages)
• philosophy of language, language theory and semiotics (in particular epistemological and idealistic philosophy of language and aesthetics)

• Pure Language, Good Behaviour. Linguistic Purism and Aesthetics of Manners in Early Modern Conversation Literature  

(Project A3 within the CRC 1391: Different Aesthetics)

Project A3 focuses on linguistic purism in Italy, France and Germany. In the second funding phase, it will examine the connection between ‘pure language’ and ‘good taste’ in the context of an ‘aesthetics of manners.’ Regulation of language (autological dimension) and regulation of behaviour (heterological dimension), it argues, form a close relationship that can be observed in conversation literature by means of the decorum (bienséance) as figure of aesthetic reflection. The project is based on a multilingual corpus that includes, among others, courtly literature, conversational treatises and humanistic dialogues (Colloquia).

• Abundancy, Redundancy, Cornucopia. Techniques of Amplification in Early Modern Epideictics

(Project A5 within the CRC 1391: Different Aesthetics)

Project A5, which in the second funding phase will combine rhetorical and linguistic expertise, studies techniques of hyperbolic amplification in Italian and German epideictic texts of the early modern period. These techniques are generally known in classical rhetoric as amplificatio. A5 focuses on forms of amplification that are particularly marked, elaborate, or even exaggerated; they are understood as figures of aesthetic reflection. In terms of literary and cultural history, they are situated in the context of the early modern argutia movement ('sophistry'), which originated in Italy and is a European phenomenon.

• Purism – Discourses and practices of Sprachreinheit (2019-2023)

(Project A3 within the CRC 1391: Different Aesthetics)

• Verbal and nominal aspectuality between lexicon and grammar (2017-2021)

(Project C7 within the CRC 883: The Construction of Meaning - The Dynamics and Adaptivity of Linguistic Structures )

The aim of the Project C7 was to investigate diatopic and diachronic variation of verbal and nominal aspectuality in Romance languages as well as Romance based creole languages. The main attention was on the interaction between grammar and the lexicon, in particular on the division of labor in the emergence and constitution of aspectual meaning. C7 examined two closely related aspectual domains: In the verbal domain the focus was on imperfectivity and progressivity, with special regard to progressive verbal periphrases, while the nominal domain focused on the interaction between nominal aspect and the particular lexical class of superordinate object mass nouns, situated between count and mass nouns.

•  Phenomena of Ambiguity in Diachrony and in Typological Comparison: Existence and Location (2014-2017)

(Project C4 within the CRC 883: The Construction of Meaning - The Dynamics and Adaptivity of Linguistic Structures )

The main aim of the project was to investigate mechanisms of interpretation from a dynamic perspective, focusing on language change and variation. We considered ambiguity at the semantics-pragmatics interface to be a fundamental engine of language variation and change. We studied both micro- and macro-variation, focusing on the domain of existential and locational constructions. The investigation of these constructions in a world-wide representative sample of 30 languages provided us with reliable data on the limits and possibilities of macro-variation in this domain. Psycholinguistic tests and corpus studies within the Romance language family informed us about both synchronic and diachronic micro-variation, giving us precise information about the decisive factors that have an impact on fine-grained structures. Based on the results of research in these empirical fields, we developed a dynamic formal semantics for existential and locational constructions that is both typologically and psycho-linguistically informed.

• Romance verbal periphrases: synchronic and diachronic construction of meaning (2015-2017)

(SFB 883: The Construction of Meaning -The Dynamics and Adaptivity of Linguistic Structures)

• Existence and localisation (2014-2016)

(BMBF integrated project Computational Historical Semantics)