TASK GROUP ON LEXICAL VARIATION
OBJECTIVES
- To develop a substantive theoretical insight from a European perspective into the conditions and factors surrounding lexical variation.
- To develop a framework which allows for a ‘neutral’, i.e. non-stigmatizing, description of linguistic variants in dictionaries.
- To examine the inclusion of frequency information of lexical variants in onomasiological dictionaries and its methods of presentation to the user.
- To classify the diverse types and frequency of lexical variation found at phrase-level across common European languages.
Work division tasks
| Researcher | Assigned objectives | Empirical context |
|---|---|---|
| Anna Havinga | 1 & 2 | German, Historical (Grammars) Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century |
| Chris Mulhall | 1 & 4 | Italian-English Bilingual Dictionaries from Renaissance to present-day |
| Karlien Franco | 1 & 3 | Dutch dialect dictionaries – present |
RESEARCHER PROFILES
Karlien Franco – PhD Candidate at QLVL, University of Leuven, Belgium.
Email: Karlien.Franco@kuleuven.be
Karlien Franco is a PhD candidate at the RU Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics (QLVL) of the University of Leuven. Her PhD research concerns lexical variation across dialects. In particular, she aims to determine if and how concept characteristics, such as negative connotation or vagueness, influence the amount of lexical variability that occurs across dialects. She is also interested in how her findings may reflect geographical patterns and how they relate to traditional dialectology.
Anna Havinga – PhD Candidate at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.
Email: Anna.Havinga@bristol.ac.uk
Anna Havinga is a PhD candidate and assistant teacher in Modern Languages (German) at the University of Bristol. While working on language attitudes in contemporary Austria and England for her master thesis at the University of Graz, Anna now focuses on historical sociolinguistics. In particular, she is investigating the implementation of Saxon language norms into Austrian German in the 18th century, which went hand in hand with the stigmatisation of the latter variety.
Dr Chris Mulhall, Lecturer in Modern Languages at Waterford Institute of Technology, Republic of Ireland.
Email: cmulhall@wit.ie
Chris Mulhall is a lecturer in Modern Languages (French and Italian) at Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland. Chris has a BA in Applied Languages (French, Italian and Spanish), an MBS in International Business and a PhD in Italian (National University of Ireland, Dublin). His main focus of research is in the area of idiomaticity, in particular on the semantic categorisation of idiomatic expressions and the factors motivating the variability of idiomatic expressions. Other research interests include socio-cultural narratives in dictionaries, particularly in high frequency entries, and regional and gender identities in dictionary content.