Funding success for linguistics at the University of Konstanz

After a successful first funding period, the Konstanz-based Research Unit RU 2111 “Questions at the Interfaces” is awarded funding for another three years

The Research Unit RU 2111 “Questions at the Interfaces” at the University of Konstanz, which has been funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) since 2016, has started its second funding period. The Research Unit’s interdisciplinary team, which is comprised of linguists, computer linguists as well as computer scientists, conducts basic research into the structure of non-canonical questions. These include rhetorical questions, echo questions, self-directed questions as well as leading questions, all of which are also popular framing tools in public and political discourse, among other things. The impact that linguistic devices have on public perceptions are thus a major research topic under investigation in the University of Konstanz’s Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality: Perceptions, Participation and Policies”.  

Combining expertise from theoretical, computational and experimental linguistics as well as visual analytics, the experts working together in the Research Unit are investigating questions that are posed for the sole purpose of achieving a certain effect. The overall aim is to study how different components of grammar (morphology, syntax, phonology) interface with one another to achieve such an effect. To that end, the researchers use a broad variety of methods and sources, ranging from field work among Icelandic-speaking migrants in Manitoba (Canada) to linguistic analyses of Bollywood films..

“We are approaching this topic from a cognitive sciences perspective, which is why we also study how the structure of questions is rooted in the brain. This kind of neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics research focuses on language acquisition, among other things. Children, for instance, have trouble understanding non-canonical questions”, explains the University of Konstanz linguist Professor Miriam Butt, speaker of RU 2111 and principal investigator in the Konstanz-based Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality”.

While in the first funding period the researchers focused on cataloguing non-canonical questions using Natural Language Processing (NLP), the goal for the second funding period is to analyse the data thus obtained in an interactive way. In the future, the researchers are hoping to be able to formally describe non-canonical questions and their impact on everyday communication and to thus make a major contribution towards a better understanding of misconceptions and framing effects.

Facts:

  • Second funding period for Research Unit RU 2111 “Questions at the Interfaces” underway
  • Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) since 2016
  • Funding for another three years until 31 March 2022; funding volume for second funding period: approx. 3,7 million euros
  • Speaker: Professor Miriam Butt from the Department of Linguistics at the University of Konstanz
  • Shared research topics with the Konstanz-based Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality: Perceptions, Participation and Policies”