Communication verbs as indicators of situational context:
Usage-based indexicality in corpus analysis and speaker knowledge (IndeKS)
FWF-Research project | 01.09.2025 – 31.08.2028 | Institute of German Studies | University of Innsbruck
The project investigates the assumptions of usage-based language models and their methodological implementation through corpus linguistic analysis, focusing on the phenomenon of indexicality.
News
The data collection software developed for the rating and free-text study, Indeks-Rating: Data Collection Software for Rating/Association Tasks, is available on Zenodo. In addition, the preregistration of the planned studies on ratings, elicitation, and pile sorting of domain-related indexicality in German communication verbs has been published on OSF.
These steps mark the completion of key preparatory work for the empirical study, and data collection for Subproject B is now ready to begin.
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On 17 March 2026, our project was presented at the Innsbrucker Linguistischer Arbeitskreis (ILAK). We gave an overview of the project’s framework and objectives, presented the current work of subprojects A and B, and discussed it with the participants of the working group. The event poster is available here.
The project is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
Grant DOI: 10.55776/PAT202772

Team
assoz. Prof. Dr. Cordula Meißner (Principal Investigator)
Anna-Lena Randermann, B.A. M.Ed. (Doctoral researcher, subproject A)
Janina Deilke, B.A. M.Sc. (Doctoral researcher, subproject B)
