Language is a core factor of personal and societal development. This is the focus of the Centro de Linguística da Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (CLUNL) through different research approaches.

Linguistic research develops in different sub-areas, involving a diversity of epistemological assumptions and theoretical frameworks. The Centro de Linguística da Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (CLUNL) takes on and integrates this diversity as an enriching factor, providing consistent work both from the point of view of fundamental knowledge as well as applied approaches in multiple contexts that are relevant to the development of people, and to the construction of more inclusive and fair innovative societies.

CLUNL’s fundamental research focuses on traditional areas of linguistics and on new emerging areas. From a theoretical and descriptive point of view, this research aims to attain a better understanding of the specificity of human language, of particular linguistic systems, and of the processes of language acquisition and development, language change, language variation and language use. The broad range of linguistic sub-areas developed in this unit allows for the understanding of languages as complex and dynamic objects.

In a more applied perspective, CLUNL has the scientific knowledge and the linguistic resources (specific terminologies, specialised corpora, tools for the building of databases, development of diagnosis materials for different types of language impairment, development of better tools for language teaching and teacher training) to respond to different social needs, from the perspective of either the general or a specialised public (teachers, students, language therapists and translators, among others). The recognition of the skills developed so far has also enabled partnerships and consulting services provided to public and private Portuguese institutions (publishing houses, schools and companies, public administration services and institutional agencies such as the Portuguese Parliament and the Portuguese Court of Auditors).

Research groups

Based on internal coherence and in order to optimise productivity, CLUNL is organised into groups, in which researchers share specific assumptions and research objectives. This ensures the effectiveness of the research developed in each group and the holistic and plural vision that results from theoretically different approaches.

The common background of LIFE – Formal and Experimental Linguistics research group – is the assumption of a generative approach to language. According to this theoretical framework, the challenge for linguistics is to understand what the faculty of language is in comparison to other biological systems. The challenging aspect is to understand why languages change, how they develop, and what their fundamental properties are, aiming at expanding the knowledge on the grammatical properties of adult grammars and providing accurate descriptions of European Portuguese, in comparison with other languages, and analyses pinning down the syntactic atoms of these constructions. This is done in close articulation with studies on the acquisition of L1, L2, and on diachronic variation.

The LLT – Lexicology, Lexicography and Terminology research group – establishes itself on the basis of different theoretical and epistemological frameworks, thus demonstrating an eclectic point of view on lexicon and terminology. These different views are grounded on multiple theoretical backgrounds, such as conceptual terminology, communicative terminology, lexical semantics, and knowledge organisation theories. These backgrounds support the methods underlying the terminological, lexical and semantic resources the group builds in order to respond to the community’s needs.

The work carried out in the Grammar and Text research group – G&T – is based on the crossovers established between grammatical models and a socio-interactionist approach, assuming that linguistic components are always interacting with other factors. In this sense, the research focuses on the integrated analysis of texts, discourses/forms and constructions. In general terms, a non-representational concept of language is assumed, from which all the analytical work converges towards the characterisation of language activity, in their praxiological, gnoseological and linguistic aspects.

The CLCM group – Cognition, Language and Multimodal Communication – has two main goals: to develop studies of cognitive linguistics applied to Portuguese; and to contribute to multimodal communication and human interaction studies as well as to achieve a better understanding of contemporary performance in Western society.

Ongoing projects and initiatives

In addition to the work developed by the various groups, CLUNL considers advanced training as a priority. For that reason, CLUNL hosts PhD students and different postdoc projects. This area currently benefits from the PhD Programme KRUse – Knowledge, Representation and Use – funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) (PD/00044/2012), which organises an annual summer school with internationally renowned teachers in the financed areas (psycholinguistics, lexicology and terminology, text and discourse linguistics).

Through the various aspects of research, CLUNL acts as a reference unit: it contributes to innovation, through fundamental research in cutting-edge areas, in the domain of linguistics, and invests in the articulation with the society, identifying needs in different professional groups and creating contexts of application and dissemination of the produced knowledge. In this regard, the journal Estudos Linguísticos/Linguistic Studies (with peer review) plays a significant role in the dissemination of the research outcomes whilst enabling increased interaction with international researchers. It also reinforces the status of Portuguese as a language of science, according to the guidelines approved at the second International Conference on Portuguese Language (Lisbon, 2013).

Ongoing Projects

CoRUs (UID/LIN/03213/2013)
Financing: FCT
CLUNL is currently committed to the implementation of the CoRUs project. The main objective of this project is to develop an articulated approach to questions related to Knowledge, Representation and Use in the domain of linguistics, following different theoretical and methodological perspectives. The project intends to answer the following core questions:

How is knowledge of language represented in the mind? How can lexical and terminological units (in oral, written and multimodal speech) represent shared knowledge (always partially), and how do they contribute to the building/reformulation/dissemination of knowledge? How do texts and speech (through language forms) build knowledge and represent the world? In what way are the negotiation and construction of knowledge carried out, in international and (inter)institutional contexts?

European projects

BlackBox – A collaborative platform to document performance composition: from conceptual structures in the backstage to customisable visualisations in the front-end.
Financing: ERC – Starting Grant 2013
Researcher: Carla Fernandes.
Start: May 2014.

Action IS1305 – European network of e-lexicography (ENeL).
Researcher (Portuguese part): Rute Costa.
Start: October 2013.

Europeana Space – Spaces of possibility for the creative re-use of Europeana’s content
Financing: FP7 – CIP-Best Practice Network 2013
Researcher: Carla Fernandes.
Start: February 2014.

Other projects

The Case of Grammatical Relations [IF/00846/2013]
Financing: FCT
Researcher: Ludovico Franco
Start: 2014.

Promotion of Scientific Literacy (website available soon)
Financing: Gulbenkian
Researcher: Matilde Gonçalves
Start: February 2016

This article has been financed by Portuguese National Funding through the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia as part of the project Centro de Linguística da Universidade NOVA de Lisboa – UID/LIN/03213/2013

Maria Antónia Coutinho
Associate Professor
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
+351 21 790 83 00
acoutinho@fcsh.unl.pt
http://www.clunl.edu.pt/
http://www.degois.pt/visualizador/curriculum.jsp?key=5832305711960992

The post Looking at language appeared first on Horizon 2020 Projects.