SFB 471: Variation and Evolution in the Lexicon

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The central theme of this collaborative research centre is the representation of language in the mental lexicon, how it varies across languages and dialects, and how it changes in time. The languages researched cover a large number of language families and language areas: Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Romance, Indo-Aryan, Uralic, Altaic and Afro-Asiatic. Sharing a focus on the interplay of language structure with cognition and culture, but using a variety of methodologies this collaborative research centre cuts across the boundaries of the faculty's departments (History & Sociology, Literature, Linguistics, and Philosophy). The methods employed include theroretical linguistics, experimental psycholinguistics, the interpretive analysis of spontaneous speech, and philological and historical analyses of texts. An interdisciplinary approach of each research group is fundamental to this enterprise.