Profile
The Chair of Romance Linguistics (Spanish/French) focuses on Hispanic linguistics. On the one hand, the specific linguistic subject areas should be present here in their full breadth (synchronic and diachronic, internal and external linguistics of Spanish and Hispanophony), i.e. basic knowledge of all these fields should be imparted, especially in teaching. On the other hand, linguistics is aimed at developing its content in coordination with Hispanic literary studies and cultural studies at the Institute of Romance Studies at TU Dresden.
The target culture is primarily Spain. With regard to Latin America, certain focal points are to be set. Mexico and Argentina in particular, but also other countries, will be the points of reference for cultural studies, literary studies and thus also linguistics.
Certain linguistic sub-disciplines, paradigms and theories can provide particularly suitable points of view for cooperation with Hispanic literary studies and cultural studies: Comparative text typology and other fields of contrastive linguistics, language history, multilingualism research, cognitive semantics (prototypes, stereotypes, etc.), studies on language culture as well as on communicative forms of behavior in oral dialogues of various kinds (politeness, rhetoric, etc.).
In this context, historical linguistics is still regarded as a fruitful background from which in-depth and extended explanations can be drawn on many occasions. In the complicated juxtaposition of Bachelor's and Master's degree courses that characterizes the current educational landscape, it also offers the possibility of separating higher from average standards. In this respect, it plays a continuously important role in the Chair's research and teaching activities.
In addition to Spanish, the Chair also represents French. In cooperation with the first Chair of Romance Linguistics (Prof. Dr. Maria Lieber), the topics are set differently than in the case of Hispanic Studies. The main role is played by standardization and the problems of French language policy (current and from a historical perspective), not least in view of the greater importance of French for teacher training. This also opens up bridges to French cultural studies.
Core research areas
(1) Topic: Text and dialog traditions in everyday life and literature
Following Brigitte Schlieben-Lange, Peter Koch has developed the concept of discourse traditions and thus provided a foundation for research into the history of text types and forms of dialog within Romance studies. This concept is also suitable for the integration of German studies contributions, in which this topic has been particularly advanced. As far as the empirical side is concerned, decisive progress has been made in the field of Romance languages in recent years, as evidenced by the representative anthology by Gerhard Ernst and Martin Gleßgen (2003). An exemplary, very fine contribution in the field of Hispanic studies is Rolf Eberenz's research on the Regimientos de peste of the late Middle Ages.
On this solid, illustrative basis, various historical text types and dialog types of everyday life are examined as part of the core research areas. As a consequence of the intradisciplinary bridges within Hispanic Studies, which correspond to the profile of the Chair, occasional side glances at literature form an integral part of the research interests. So far, contributions have been presented on dialogues in literature, the functional style of academic language and medieval documents. In 2010, a further contribution on early medieval Latin-Hispanic documents will be added, showing how the characteristics of historical text types influence the interpretation of grammatical findings.
Publications in this area to date:
(1999) "Grammaire générale et grammaires spécifiques des genres de texte: l'exemple des chartes médiévales". In: Ruffino, Giovanni (ed.). Atti del XXI Congresso internazionale di linguistica e filologia romanza. Vol. VI, 27-36.
(1999), "¿Latín tardío o latín medieval? A propósito de las cartas hispánicas redactadas
entre los siglos VIII y XII". In: Petersmann, Hubert/ Kettemann, Rudolf (eds.): Latin vulgaire - latin tardif. Actes du Ve Colloque international sur le latin vulgaire et tardif. Heidelberg: Winter, pp. 309-318.
(2004): "Estructura y estilo en los diálogos en 'El Gallego y su cuadrilla'. In: Rodiek, Christoph (ed.): Homenaje a Camilo José Cela. Coloquio internacional de la Universidad de Dresde (11-12 de noviembre de 2002). Kassel: Edition Reichenbach, 179-203.
(2007) "Aspectos temáticos, tareas y perspectivas de la investigación del lenguaje científico castellano". In: Rehrmann, Norbert (ed.)/Ramírez Sainz, Laura (ed.): Dos culturas en diálogo. Historia cultural de la naturaleza, la técnica y las ciencias culturales en España y América Latina. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 77-106.
(2010): Grammatikalisierungsprozesse zwischen Latein und Iberoromanisch. Tübingen: Narr.
(2) Topic: Contrastive study of polysemy
This line of research concerns the multiple meanings of words and is therefore potentially related to the multiple meanings of literary texts and the event of intercultural misunderstanding that takes place in communication practice (parole). However, it is initially a linguistic problem: to what extent are the additional meanings of the words of a bilingual equivalence pair (such as pie (Spanish) - pied (French) or Ziel (German) - meta (Spanish)) the same in the two languages and to what extent do they differ? Is there convergence or divergence between languages?
Contrary to popular opinion, stronger convergences than divergences have been found in previous studies on several sub-corpora, and this seems to be a tendency that is also confirmed when looking at other series of lexemes. In the context of a text analysis, it also became clear that ambiguities are rarely maintained in a textual environment, so that divergences are less of a problem for translation tasks etc. than it would appear from the language system. Thirdly, theses were developed on the question of what causes the convergences.
Publications in this area so far:
(2006): "Polysemie-Konfigurationen in benachbarten Sprachen Westeuropas". In: Frings, Michael/Klump, André (eds.): Romanische Sprachen in Europa. Eine Tradition mit Zukunft?, 127-146.
Longer-term perspectives: The scope of the previous analyses should be extended, i.e. the number of lexicon entries examined should be further increased. Smaller Romance languages such as Catalan as well as English and Chinese with their special polysemy structures (conversion, high polysemy of monosyllabic Chinese lexemes) could also be included in these studies. A second way of extending this could be to investigate the pragmatics of intra- and intercultural misunderstanding, since misunderstandings are partly due to lexicalized ambiguities that become virulent depending on the context.
(3) Topic: Interrelations between general linguistics and Romance philology
One of the main tasks of general linguistics within the body of knowledge is to provide the philologies that study historically and culturally rooted individual languages with language models and theories relating to different levels and conditions of language change. On the other hand, individual philologies and their examination of the structures of certain individual languages have repeatedly made proposals for modeling language phenomena that are so general that they can be applied to many other languages. There is therefore an overlap between the interests of general linguistics and Romance studies. This is another core research area pursued by the holder of the Chair. On the one hand, overlaps are taken into consideration, while on the other hand, what can be learned from contrasts with the concerns of general linguistics (universal languages, etc.) is explored.
Publications in this area so far:
(2001): "Künstliche Sprachen und Universalsprachen". In: Haspelmath, Martin/König, Ekkehard/Oesterreicher, Wulf/Raible, Wolfgang (eds.): Sprachtypologie und sprachliche Universalien. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 85-94.
(2006): "Panorama de los escritos lingüísticos de Ortega y Gasset". In: Rodiek, Christoph (ed.): Ortega y la cultura europea. Simposio hispano-alemán de la Universidad de Dresde (18-19 de octubre de 2005). Kassel: Edition Reichenbach, pp. 45-68.
The contributions in this field have more the character of occasional papers, since there is no claim to conduct one's own research from the self-image of a general linguist. Nonetheless, the current holder of the Chair continues to engage with languages of other language families and types, if only for the reason that the coexistence of Spanish with autochthonous and allochthonous contact languages, leading to hybridization, will have a decisive influence on the further development of this language in the coming decades, to an even greater extent than has already been the case throughout its history.
Teaching program and learning objectives
(in preparation)
The teaching program is currently being continuously modified. As the process of adapting to the new conditions resulting from the recently introduced Master's and Bachelor's degree programs has not yet been completed, the plans will not be finalized until the summer semester 2010. At the beginning of the 2010/11 winter semester, a long-term, well-rounded teaching program will be put online here. I am currently providing information on the orientation, principles and content of my teaching plans in the courses themselves.
Linguistic links
http://linguistlist.org (contains many links, e.g. to freely downloadable phonetic fonts)
www.eva.mpg.de (= Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig)
www.mpi.nl (= psycholinguistic Max Planck Institute of Willem Levelt in Nijmegen)
Publications
Monographs
Heiner Böhmer (1994): Komplexe Prädikatsausdrücke im Deutschen und Französischen. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang.
(2010) Grammatikalisierungsprozesse zwischen Latein und Iberoromanisch. Tübingen: Narr
Reviews
ders. (1993): „Achim Stein: Nominalgruppen in Patentschriften. Komposita und prädikative Nominalisierungen im deutsch-französischen Vergleich“. In: Romanische Forschungen 106, Heft 1-4, 301-304.
ders. (1993): „Waltraud Weidenbusch: Funktionen der Präfigierung. Präpositionale Elemente in der Wortbildung des Französischen“. In: Romanische Forschungen 106, Heft 1-4, 304-306.
ders. (1993): „Olof Eriksson: La phrase française. Essai d'un inventaire de ses constituants syntaxiques“.In: Romanische Forschungen 106, Heft 1-4, 306-309.
ders. (1998): „Ulrich Detges: Nominalprädikate. Eine valenztheoretische Untersuchung der französischen Funktionsverbgefüge des Paradigmas <<être Präposition Nomen>> und verwandter Konstruktionen“. In: Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 108, 149-153.
„Barbara Wehr/Helga Thomaßen (eds.): Diskursanalyse. Untersuchungen zum gesprochenen Französischen. In: Romance Philology 55/2, 298-307.
„Jacob, Daniel/Kabatek, Johannes (eds.): Lengua medieval y tradiciones discursivas en la Península Ibérica. Descripción gramatical – pragmática histórica – metodología (Lingüística Iberoamericana, vol. 12)“. In: Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 119/4, 698-706.
Essays
ders. (1996): „Die Problematik der wiederholten Rede“. In: Fehrmann, Gregor/Ochsner, Beate (eds.): Konstrukte, Konstruktionen, Dekonstruktionen. Beiträge zum 10. Nachwuchskolloquium der Romanistik. Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag 1996, 15-26.
ders. (1998): „Ist Phraseologie heute noch als einheitliches Gebiet haltbar?“. In: Sabban, Anette (ed.): Phraseme im Text (Studien zur Phraseologie und Parömiologie 14), Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1-28.
ders. (1999) „Grammaire générale et grammaires spécifiques des genres de texte: l'exemple des chartes médiévales“. In: Ruffino, Giovanni (ed.). Atti del XXI Congresso internazionale di linguistica e filologia romanza. Bd. VI., 27-36.
ders. (1999), „¿Latín tardío o latín medieval? A propósito de las cartas hispánicas redactadas entre los siglos VIII y XII“. In: Petersmann, Hubert/ Kettemann, Rudolf (eds.): Latin vulgaire – latin tardif. Actes du Ve Colloque international sur le latin vulgaire et tardif. Heidelberg: Winter, S. 309-318.
ders. (2001): „Künstliche Sprachen und Universalsprachen“. In: Haspelmath, Martin/König, Ekkehard/Oesterreicher, Wulf/Raible, Wolfgang (eds.): Sprachtypologie und sprachliche Universalien. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 85-94.
ders. (2003): „Semantische Analyse von Verfügungsverben und Redensarten des Bereichs ‚Geld, Besitz‘ im Spanischen“. In: Blank, Andreas/Koch, Peter (eds.): Kognitive romanische Onomasiologie und Semasiologie. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 99-111.
ders. (2004): "Estructura y estilo en los diálogos en El Gallego y su cuadrilla". In: Rodiek, Christoph (ed.): Homenaje a Camilo José Cela. Coloquio internacional de la Universidad de Dresde (11-12 de noviembre de 2002). Kassel: Edition Reichenbach, 179-203.
ders. (2006): "Panorama de los escritos lingüísticos de Ortega y Gasset" In: Rodiek, Christoph (ed.): Ortega y la cultura europea. Simposio hispano-alemán de la Universidad de Dresde (18-19 de octubre de 2005). Kassel: Edition Reichenbach, S. 45-68.
ders. (2006): "Polysemie-Konfigurationen in benachbarten Sprachen Westeuropas". In: Frings, Michael/Klump, André (eds.): Romanische Sprachen in Europa. Eine Tradition mit Zukunft?, 127-146.
ders. (2007) "Aspectos temáticos, tareas y perspectivas de la investigación del lenguaje científico castellano". In: Rehrmann, Norbert (ed.)/Ramírez Sainz, Laura (ed.): Dos culturas en diálogo. Historia cultural de la naturaleza, la técnica y las ciencias culturales en España y América Latina. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 77-106.