GeRMaN: German register marking by non-literal expressions (A01)

• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics ; Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 416591334

A01 investigates the interdependence of register knowledge and pragmatics in the use and interpretation of non-literal expressions (NLE; including apart from metaphor and metonymy also e.g. rhetorical questions, irony, and indirect speech acts). At the same time, we extend the corpus on which our investigations are based with further oral text types. We will model the impact of register on NLE in the form of variables that can be integrated into probabilistic models of pragmatic enrichment of meaning that include NLE. For the acquisition of the relevant data from linguistic corpora, we will explore new ways of NLE detection in corpora through Deep Learning. This will constitute a modelling of register and its impact on grammar by itself.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1412: Register: Language-Users’ Knowledge of Situational-Functional Variation
• Applicant Institution: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Project Head: Professor Dr. Markus Egg