Conference LeKo - Lexical combinations and typified speech in a multilingual context

Contents and aim of the conference

While communicating in a certain language, we do not only compose single words into meaningful sentences and texts by applying grammatical rules, but we also use prefabricated word combinations that can be of a different kind and have higher or lower grades of fixity. This linguistic fact has been studied particularly within phraseological research in which, besides idiomatic expressions, also phraseologisms in a broader sense of the term, such as collocations and communicative phrasemes, are objects of analyses. In recent years, the perspectivehas become increasingly broader, not least due to progress in the fields of computational and corpus linguistics, as electronic corpora offer the chance of extracting a much larger spectrum of recurrent and statistically significant lexical combinations. Hence, in addition to combinations connected to the language system and norm, also prefabricated sequences as phenomena of the 'speech' have become a focus of phraseologicalanalyses. In this regard, also further concepts have been proposed, like for example those of typisierte Rede ('typified speech'; cf.e.g. Fernandez Bravo et al. [eds.] 1999) and of formulaic sequences (cf. Wray 2002).

The present conference marks the end of a homonymous research project (short title: LeKo), funded bythe Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen-South Tyrol and carried out in cooperation between the University of Innsbruck (Department of Romance Languages) and the EURAC (Institute for Specialised Communication and Multilingualism) (http://www.leko-project.org). In this project, amongst others, a learner corpus of Italian as an L2 which was elaborated at EURAC has been analysed according to the use of units belonging to typified speech, by evaluating the corpus data both qualitatively and quantitatively. Moreover, an attempt to detect possible causes for errors on the part of L2 learners with German as a first language was conducted, in addition to discovering specific South Tyrolean features of L2 language use and creating proposals for suitable didactic material. A multilingual context in LeKo is provided as South Tyrol distinguishes itself through strong multilingualism, which is present on the individual, social and institutional level: there are three official languages, Italian, German and Ladin, which are accompanied by several more minority languages.

In relation to the project core areas mentioned above, several issues have arisen which should be discussed during the conference and represent the starting points for the pool of thematic fields listed below. The aim of the conference is on one hand, research exchange with and within researchers who work on correlated topics, and on the other hand the presentation of the results of the project, which should be discussed during the conference and expanded upon in the research discourse in addition to being made accessible to language teachers and students.

Thematic fields

Typified speech/phraseology and didactics

• Typified speech/phraseology and (learner) corpora analysis
• Typified speech/phraseology and error analysis
• Typified speech/phraseology and (learner) lexicography
• Typified speech/phraseology and contrastive linguistics
• Typified speech/phraseology and eLearning
• Typified speech/phraseology and bilingualism or multilingualism
• Other topics correlated to the above mentioned thematic fields