Empirical profiles of grammatical creativity (A04)

• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages ; Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 512393437

A04 examines grammatical creativity, where speakers exploit their linguistic competence to create a new or modified grammatical unit that (i) fills a grammatical gap, (ii) resolves a grammatical conflict, (iii) expands the domain of use of a conventionalised construction or (iv) serves a specific communicative purpose. We will collect measures such as frequency, acceptability and reading times to investigate whether these classes of grammatical creativity have their own empirical characteristics, distinguishing them from each other and as a group from marked constructions. We will explore properties and the extent of the range of creative options in the domain of morphosyntax.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1646: Linguistic Creativity in Communication
• Applicant Institution: Universität Bielefeld
• Project Heads: Dr. Jana Häussler; Professor Dr. Ralf Vogel