• Funding: FWF (P 15806 individual project)

• Project duration: 1.9.2002 to 31.8.2005

• Team

  • Project leader: Martin Hummel

  • Technical management: Karin Stiegler

  • Staff members: Steffen Heidinger, Elke Lackner

  • Computer scientist: Thorsten Zerha

The main result of the project was a freely accessible online database dicoadverbe. It is technically maintained by the Center for Information Modelling (ZIM) at the University of Graz and contains around 13,000 entries for French short adverbs from the 11th century to the present day.

Previously, constructions of the type couper court, parler vrai, etc. were largely neglected in French linguistics and especially in the field of lexicography or assigned to informal varieties or the substandard. Only some of the syntagmas are accepted in standard French. However, adjectival adverbs were frequently used in older language levels, as well as in today's regional varieties. This tradition results from the fact that the adverbial use of adjectives is the only mechanism of adverb formation inherited by Romance languages from Latin. The aim of the project was to comprehensively document the use of adjectival adverbs in the diachrony of French, enabling further research on the topic.