In my current habilitation project I am working on topicalized infinitives in Spanish, Portuguese and French (e.g. sp. Trabajar sí que trabaja, pero...; pt. Escrever não escrevo, mas ler um livro, ou um jornal, uns versos, leio; French Pour chanter, elle chante !). I analyze this construction from several perspectives:

• Information structure and pragmatic functions especially in spoken language
• contrastive study between Spanish, Portuguese and French, in particular with regard to the variant with preceding topicalization markers (French pour + infinitive, Spanish/port. por + infinitive, as well as French quant à / Spanish en cuanto a / pt. quanto a + infinitive)
• Diachronic development (in historical corpora of written language)
• emphatic infinitives in Old Spanish Bible translations from Hebrew (cooperation with Andrés Enrique-Arias, Universitat de les Illes Balears)

Gerhalter, Katharina (2020): Paradigmas y polifuncionalidad. Estudio diacrónico de 'preciso' / 'precisamente', 'justo' / 'justamente', 'exacto' / 'exactamente' y 'cabal' / 'cabalmente'. Berlin/Bostin: de Gruyter(Supplements to the Journal of Romance Philology 448), 521 pp.
Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110669831

Detailed abstract in English: pdf

This corpus-based study analyzes Spanish exact adjectives and adverbs from a semasiological and onomasiological perspective. The first part of the dissertation analyzes the diachronic development of the individual lexeme pairs (justo / justamente, cabal / cabalmente, preciso / precisamente and exacto / exactamente), in particular the semantic changes ifrom their Latin origin to the exactness meaning.

The second part analyzes the three pragmatic or discourse functions of these adjectives and averbs, namely (1) focalization, (2) affirmation and (3) reformulation.

1. Tuvo que pasar justo hoy ('this is happening today')
   eso no fue precisamente democrático ('this was not exactly democratic')
2. ¡Exacto! ('Yes, exactly!')
3. ..., más exactamente, ... ('..., more precisely, ...')

The analyzed data show that each of these three microparadigms has a central lexeme that drives the semantic and syntactic developments that lead to the emergence of new discourse functions. The remaining exactness adjectives and adverbs adopt the new usages by analogy, for which the term "paradigmatic effect" (efecto paradigmático) is proposed. Not all exactness adjectives and adverbs take on all pragmatic functions, as the sometimes "disruptive" polysemy of the individual lexemes, as well as their different diachronic lines of development, block certain further developments.

The results are placed within the theoretical framework of grammaticalization (more precisely: pragmaticalization or subjectification) and cooptation (Thetical Grammar), which in themselves are not sufficient to explain factors such as mutual influence within a paradigm.

Supervisor and first reviewer: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Martin Hummel

Second reviewer: Ao.Univ.-Prof. Dr. Stefan Schneider

The aim of this cooperation project between the Institute of Romance Studies and the ZIM (Center for Information Modelling in the Humanities) was to create the open access database "Adjective-Adverb Interfaces in Romance" according to the standards of CLARIN-ERIC. This makes linguistic evidence on the phenomenon of adjective-adverbs in Romance languages generally accessible and usable via an online corpus. In the spirit of open access, the language data on which scientific publications on the topic are based could thus be made comprehensible and different data sets from different Romance languages could be linked together.

The database "Adjective-Adverb Interfaces in Romance" (=AAIF) resulting from the project is an annotated and partially lemmatized corpus of Romance adjectives that are used in adverbial functions (e.g. Fr. voler haut, aller droit, also as modifiers of word classes other than the verb, e.g. the adjective in Sp. es cosa harto seria) and as part of prepositional adverbs (Pt. de novo, Sp. a ciegas). It integrates several corpora of different Romance languages (French, Italo-Romance varieties, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish) and Latin. Currently (version 2021), the database contains a total of around 35,000 annotated examples.

A search mask enables queries in each individual corpus as well as in freely combinable corpora. Adverbs are annotated according to a common annotation model with the same morphological, semantic and syntactic categories. The annotation model thus provides a cross-linguistic categorization for the multifunctional word class "adverb" on the basis of its forms, functions and meanings. In the future, the corpus can be expanded to include new data sets that use the same annotation model.

• Link to the database: http://gams.uni-graz.at/context:aaif
• Link to the project: https://adjective-adverb.uni-graz.at/de/abgeschlossene-fwf-projekte/open-access-database-aaif/

• Funding: FWF (ORD 66-VO)
• Project duration: 15.09.2017 to 14.09.2020

Team:

• Project management: Prof. Martin Hummel
• Data acquisition and annotation: Dr. Katharina Gerhalter
• Data modeling: Christopher Pollin, BA MA MA
• Data modeling: Gerlinde Schneider

(accepted) XXIV. Deutscher Hispanistiktag, 11.-15. März 2025. "Presencia vs. ausencia de la preposición por ante infinitivos topicalizados. Análisis combinado de datos de corpus y datos experimentales"

Workshop Placeholders in East and West. Universität Tübingen. 9.-11. Oktober 2024. "Spanish fulano: Lexicalization of a proper name placeholder."

LingCor2024 - 3rd Workshop on Spoken Corpus Linguistics, University of Vienna, 25.-26. July 2024. "Tu madre coser cose bien, pero dibujar, dibuja mal. Recopilación y análisis de infinitivos topicalizados en el español hablado."

Colloquium "Aktuelle Themen der romanischen Sprachwissenschaft" at the University of Tübingen, Nov. 22, 2023: "Topicalized infinitives in Spanish and Portuguese."

First International Conference Automated texts In the ROMance languages (Ai-ROM), September 28-29, 2023, Desden. "How do DeepL and ChatGPT deal with information structure and pragmatics? A Case Study of Topicalized Infinitives in Spanish"

15th Lusitanian Conference, Zwickau, September 19-23, 2023. "Advérbios no português brasileiro: variações entre língua falda e língua escrita no corpus Discurso & Gramática"

56th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, August 29 - September 1, 2023, Athens. With Andrés Enrique-Arias:"Morir morirás 'for certain you will die'. Intensifying strategies in Medieval Spanish biblical translation"

International Conference: Adverbs and Adverbials: Issues in semantic and functional ambiguity, Nicosia, Cyprus, 18-19 May, 2023. With Stefan Koch: "Polyfunctional adverbs in Portuguese: a corpus-based analysis of semantic-functional ambiguity"

Lecture at the Departamento de Lengua Española, Universidad de Valencia, March 1, 2023: "Ya te digo que mentir mienten. Análisis pragmalingüístico de la construcción [infinitivo topicalizado + verbo duplicado] en conversaciones en la televisión española"

Linguistic Colloquium (Institute of Linguistics, University of Graz), November 8, 2022. "Corpus linguistics and historical pragmatics: two case studies on infinitive prefixes of the type llorar llora in Spanish (and Portuguese)"

VI Congreso Internacional de Corpus Diacrónicos en Lenguas Iberorrománicas (CODILI6), 05-07.10.2022. With Andrés Enrique-Arias (Università de les Illes Balears): "Intensificación y énfasis en castellano medieval: La traducción de los infinitivos absolutos de la Biblia Hebrea".

XXX Congreso Internacional de Lingüística y Filología Románicas, La Laguna (Tenerife), July 4-9, 2022. With Anja Hennemann (University of Potsdam): "Ausencia y presencia de marcadores de tópico: El caso de infinitivos como tópicos en español y portugués".

XII Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Lengua Española, León, May 16-20, 2022."Entrar, bien podéys entrar; no sé si podéys salir. El infinitivo topicalizado y sus usos pragmático-discursivos en corpus históricos".

Colloquium Romance Linguistics, Institute of Romance Studies, Leipzig University. November 8, 2021 (by invitation). Lecture (in presence): "Topicalized infinitives in Spanish, Portuguese and French. Diachrony, pragmatics and information structure"

XXXVII Romance Studies Conference, Augsburg, 4-7 October 2021, Section "Entgrenzte Konstruktionsgrammatik: Von der Grammatik zum discourse genre und zurück" (in presence in Bonn), "Topicalized infinitives in Spanish and Portuguese: On the text-type-specific diachrony of a genuinely oral construction"

XIV Lusitanian Conference, Leipzig, September 15-19, 2021 (in presence). "Infinitivos topicalizados nos corpora históricos do português"

Project-Workshop The Third Way - Prepositional Adverbials in Romance Languages, Graz [hybrid], July 1-2, 2021.
with Nicolás Solari Jarque (Universidad de Alcalá): "Presentación del Corpus of Latin Prepositional Adverbials with Adjectival Core. Tendencias, distribución y análisis cuantitativo"
with Stefan Koch (University of Graz): "PA, AA and mente-Adverbs in Brazilian Portuguese. A corpus analysis"

"Infinitivos topicalizados: un estudio exploratorio de construcciones de tipo saber no sabe nada...", Colloquium on Romance Linguistics (online), 28/04/2021.

Congreso Internacional "Construcciones y Operadores discursivos" (CICOD), Sevilla, 28/10/2020, online. "Pues mira, ayudar no es que ayudéis mucho, la verdad": Análisis pragmático del infinitivo topicalizado.

Conference "The problem of the Adverb", 01.-02.10.2020, online conference (organization: Paris, Université La Sorbonne). Martin Hummel & Katharina Gerhalter: "On the category of Adverb in Romance".

LREC2020(European Language Resources Association), 11-16.05.2020. Marseille. Poster presentation. Canceled (publication of the paper)

XXXVI Romance Language Conference, Kassel, 2.10.2019.Innovaciones por linguistic expansion en el paradigma de los adverbios de exactitud. (Section 14: Romance morphology and syntax in expansion-induced language change).

VI Congreso Internacional de la Red Charta (Documentos y monumentos para la historia del español). Sevilla, 11.09.2019. Together with Martin Hummel: Hacia una categorización intermedia de los corpus documentales.

DisRom6 (Discourse Markers in Romance Languages). Bergamo, 29.05.2019. Pragmatics and Diachrony of a Cross-Linguistic Construction: "Negation + Focus Adverb Expressing Exactness" in Spanish, French and Portuguese.

XXII German Hispanic Conference. Berlin, 28.03.2019. La marginalización de dos adverbiales preposicionales: 'al justo' y 'al cabal'.[Sección"LING_5: Modifiers in varieties of Spanish and in contrast with Romance languages: descriptive, prescriptive and ideal norms", section head Martin Hummel and Anna-Maria de Cesare]

XLVIII Simposio de la Sociedad Española de Lingüística (SEL). Madrid, 29.01.2019. La comida aquí no es precisamente barata. .. La diacronía de valores pragmáticos de atenuación aproximativa e inversión irónica en la construcción "negación(no) + adverbio de foco(precisamente, exactamente). [Section "De construcciones a marcadores: procesos de fijación y usos discursivos", section leader Catalina Fuentes Rodríguez]

5th Conference Digital Humanities Austria, 29.11.-1.12.2018 (DHA 2018), University of Salzburg.
Poster: Christopher Pollin, Gerlinde Schneider, Katharina Gerhalter, Martin Hummel: Open Access Database 'Adjective-Adverb Interfaces in Romance'.

Conference on Corpus Linguistics for Spanish (CLICE 2018). Florence, October 29-30, 2018. Seminario de demostración de recursos: "Open Access Database-Adjective-Adverb Interfaces in Romance"

XI Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Lengua Española. Lima, August 06-10, 2018 La diacronía de un adverbio desusado: cabalmente.

XXXII Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Jóvenes Lingüistas. Sevilla, November 09 - 11, 2017. Katharina Gerhalter & Abir Salaaoui (Universidad de Oviedo / Universidad de Jendouba): La historia de un arabismo en español: fulano / fulana

XVII Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Jóvenes Investigadores de la Historia de la Lengua Española. Cádiz, April 5 - 7, 2017 La pragmaticalización de los adjetivos y adverbios de exactitud como marcadores de afirmación

Congreso "Enunciado y discurso: estructuras y relaciones". Sevilla, 28 - 30 November 2016 La pragmaticalización de preciso/precisamente, justo/justamente y exacto/exactamente

Kandersteg (Switzerland): ALPES Winter School "Abriendo Líneas en el Pasado del Español", January 18-22, 2016.

XXX Congreso de la Asociación de Jóvenes Lingüistas Comillas, October 07 - 09, 2015 Puro, mero y simple. La discursivización de tres operadores-focalizadores

Congreso de Semántica Latina y Románica Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 17 - 18 November 2014. El desarrollo diacrónico de la polisemia y polifuncionalidad de justo y justamente: del significado etimológico a los significados procedimentales

Ljubljana (Slovenia): Romanist CEEPUS - Seminar for PhD students, November 2014

XXIX Congreso de la Asociación de Jóvenes Lingüistas Murcia, 03 - 05 September 2014. Estudio diacrónico de la polifuncionalidad y discursivización de los adverbios 'justo' y 'justamente'

Lecture "El panorama lingüístico de España: The languages of Spain" and quiz "Can you recognize the Spanish accents?" (together with students) at the Tribuna Festival "Viva España" (25.05.2023)

Taster lessons on the Open House Day ("How does Spanish sound? And why?" 15.03.2023, "Does that sound Spanish to you?" 04.04.2024)

Workshop "In the footsteps of Romance languages" in the UniGraz pop-up store together with Bettina Tengler and Valerie Simbriger (April 27, 2022)