Corpus Linguistics and Diachronic Syntax: The Grammaticalization of Non-Canonical Subjects in Slavonic Languages (German Research Foundation, 06/2008-05/2011)
Project leader: | Project team: | |
Prof. Dr. Roland Meyer (responsible) |
Christine Grillborzer, M.A. | |
Prof. Dr. Bjorn Hansen | Iryna Parkhomenko, M.A. | |
Prof. Dr. Ernst Hansack | Uliana Yazhinova, Dipl. | |
Aleksej Tikhonov, SHK |
Topic:
The empirically oriented the project conducts corpus-based research on the diachronic development of a focus area of Slavonic linguistics: non-canonical subject realisation. Under this cover term, we subsume superficially unrealised (null) subjects, as well as non-agreeing and non-nominative subjects. The central questions which the project addresses is: What diachronic linguistic developments lead to the present-day variation among Slavonic languages in the area of subject realisation? How can they be determined by current corpus linguistic methods?
Method:
Since we depend on adequately annotated diachronic corpora, an important sub-goal of the project is to compile a diachronic research corpus of Russian. Based on this empirical foundation, formal and functional factors involved in subject realization shall be documented. Our Russian corpus (RRuDi) is currently being built up and will be evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively. The results are being compared to the situation in Old Polish and Old Czech, as evident from existing corpora.
Goals:
We primarily aim at new findings on diachronic syntactic change in Slavonic languages in the area of subject realisation. In the long run, the project also wants to demonstrate how corpus technology can be used to improve diachronic research.