Syntax Interacts with Common Ground: Non-Canonical Inversion Structures (B06)

• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 538184825

Project B6 investigates the types of common ground updates that can be triggered by syntactic structures, focusing on non-canonical inversion structures such as English locative inversion. The hypothesis is that these structures deliver a scenic update, specifying perceptual perspective, which needs to be captured as a perspective feature in an adequate model of CG. As the occurrence of these structures seems to depend upon text type, the project will explore CG management in asymmetric discourse types. The approach is to employ both corpus data and experimentation to build an account informed by grammatical theory.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1718: Common Ground: Cognition - Grammar - Communication
• Applicant Institution: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
• Project Heads: Professorin Dr. Katrin Axel-Tober; Professor Dr. Samuel Featherston; Professorin Dr. Susanne Winkler