Mirativity and Common Ground Updates in Romance Languages (B04)

• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 538184825

The main goal of B4 is the modeling of a more fine-grained typology of non-default common ground updates by studying mirativity in Romance, i.e., the linguistic encoding of new or unexpected information. Combining synchronic and diachronic corpus analyses with acceptability judgment experiments, we investigate the defining features of mirativity (RQ1) and the development of mirative markers as well as the cross-linguistic correlations between their formal source, the diachronic grammaticalization / prag-maticalization paths, and the specific mirative common ground updates that they trigger (RQ2), for which Romance languages provide an ideal comparative testbed.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1718: Common Ground: Cognition - Grammar - Communication
• Applicant Institution: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
• Project Heads: Professorin Dr. Sarah Dessì Schmid; Professorin Dr. Evelyn Wiesinger