Linguistics research area

In linguistics, we deal with the description and analysis of Romance languages from different perspectives: Sounds (phonetics and phonology), grammar and word formation (morphology), sentence structures (syntax), meanings (semantics) and language use in a communicative context (pragmatics). The Romance languages are examined both individually and from a comparative perspective. We are particularly interested in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Friulian.

Research and teaching focus on the following questions, among others: How did the Romance languages develop from Latin (language history)? What changes have the Romance languages undergone (e.g. changes in sound, morphology and meaning)? What are the similarities and differences between the Romance languages? How do these languages function in the respective societies and what is the connection between society and language (e.g. in advertising or politics; sociolinguistics)? What is the connection between perception, thinking and language (cognitive linguistics)? What are the differences between written and spoken language? What dialects are there in French, Spanish and Italian, what significance do they have and what (special) features characterize them (variety linguistics)? How have the Romance languages developed outside Europe, for example in America, and with which other languages have they come into contact (language contact research, creole languages)?

In our research, we thus analyze a variety of linguistic phenomena and rely on different empirical methods:

• Corpus analysis (evaluation of authentic language material / language data that is as representative as possible, including, for example, medieval Italian, French or Spanish)
• Speaker surveys (field research / data collection on site using questionnaires)
• Experimental methods (e.g. acceptability studies)
• Qualitative methods

In our research-led teaching, we teach these methods to students who carry out their own research as part of their final theses.

We work on an interdisciplinary basis with the linguistic departments of other institutes (especially General Linguistics, German Studies, Slavic Studies and English Studies) (e.g. in the Collaborative Research Center "Language between Redundancy and Deficiency", sub-project leader: Steffen Heidinger). In the area of language acquisition research (first and second language acquisition) there are also interdisciplinary overlaps with subject didactics.

Romance linguistics is also integrated into the faculty research focus areas currently being developed, namely via Sabine Heinemann with a sub-project on the conceptualization of the Mediterranean in political reporting (possibly with a second one on maritime republics and language contact).