Leitung: Apl. Prof. Dr. Inga Hennecke (Universität Tübingen) und Prof. Dr. Evelyn Wiesinger (Universität Regensburg)
DFG-Förderung: 2023-2026
Kurzbeschreibung:
The scientific network has the overarching goal of investigating Spanish prepositional constructions as well as the role of prepositional elements within constructions, e.g. distinto a/de ‘different from’, vehículo de/a motor ‘motor vehicle’ or contactar con/a alguien ‘contact sb’, which are typical for the Romance languages. Our network adopts a usage-based Construction Grammar approach and relies on corpus analyses as well as experimental psycholinguistic methods. The network projects contribute to a refined understanding of the nature of prepositions in at least three ways. First, we do not investigate prepositions as isolated items but bring into focus larger linguistic units (or ‘constructions’) as well as the respective (lexical, grammatical or discursive) elements that are connected by prepositions within them. Second, the assumption of a continuum between lexicon and syntax resolves the unclear lexical vs. grammatical cut off line, both for prepositions and for the constructions in which they occur. Third, the constructionist perspective highlights the dynamic relationship between concrete tokens and more schematic patterns at various levels of complexity and abstraction.