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

Contents and objectives of the conference

When we communicate in a language, we not only combine individual words into meaningful sentences and texts by means of grammatical rules, but also always resort to prefabricated word combinations, which can be of different types and fixed to varying degrees. This fact has been and continues to be taken into account in phraseology research in particular, where not only idiomatic expressions but also phraseologisms in the broader sense, such as collocations and communicative phrasemes, are the subject of research. In recent years - not least due to advances in the field of computer and corpus linguistics - the focus has been increasingly broadened to the extent that a much wider range of recurrent and statistically significant lexeme combinations can be determined using electronic corpora. As a result, analyses have increasingly focused on prefabricated sequences as phenomena of speech, in addition to connections anchored in the language system and in the norm. In connection with these aspects, other terms have also been proposed: examples include typified speech (cf. e.g. Fernandez Bravo et al. [eds.] 1999) and formulaic sequences (cf. Wray2002).

The conference is the final event of a research project of the same name funded by the Autonomous Province of Bolzano-South Tyrol (project abbreviation: LeKo), which has been carried out since 2013 in cooperation between the University of Innsbruck (Department of Romance Studies) and EURAC (Institute for Specialised Communication and Multilingualism) (http://www.leko-project.org). As part of this project, a learner corpus of Italian as L2 created at EURAC was analysed for units of typified speech, with the corresponding corpus data being evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively. Furthermore, an attempt was made to uncover possible causes of errors in L2 learners with German as their first language from the multilingual South Tyrolean context, to gain insights into linguistic characteristics specific to South Tyrol and to develop suggestions for suitable didactic materials. LeKo has a multilingual context in that South Tyrol is characterised by a strong multilingualism that is anchored individually, socially and institutionally: there are three official languages, Italian, German and Ladin, which are joined by numerous other languages of new minorities.

In the course of dealing with the above-mentioned project priorities, numerous questions have arisen that will be addressed during the conference and form the starting point for the catalogue of topics below. The aim of the conference is, on the one hand, to facilitate academic exchange with and between researchers who are dealing with similar problems and, on the other hand, to present the results of the project, which will be made accessible to and discussed with a wider academic audience as well as teachers and students of foreign languages at the conference.

Thematic focus

• Typed speech/phraseology and didactics
• Typed speech/phraseology and (learner) corpora analysis
• Typed speech/phraseology and error analysis
• Typed speech/phraseology and (learner) lexicography
• Typed speech/phraseology and contrastive linguistics
• Typed speech/phraseology and eLearning
• Typed speech/phraseology and bilingualism or multilingualism
• Other topics related to the above-mentioned areas

Abstract volume

Here you can find the online version of the abstract volume of the conference: ABSTRACTBAND