Dr Florent Perek will be speaking at the 11th International Workshop of the Discourse and Grammar Research Group at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 4th to 8th November 2019.
The yearly seminar is a prestigious event that has previously invited prominent figures in usage-based cognitive linguistics, such as Joan Bybee, Adele Goldberg, Martin Hilpert, Elizabeth Traugott, and Graeme Trousdale, to name only a few. About 70 participants are expected. More information can be found on the Grupo de Estudos Discurso & Gramática blog (in Portuguese)
Dr Perek, an expert in usage-based construction grammar, will give a keynote entitled “Productivity of constructions in diachrony”. The talk will discuss diachronic variation in the distribution of grammatical constructions, such as the verbs used in the way-construction, e.g. They pushed their way through the crowd. In particular, the talk will explore the insights that can be gained when the meaning of verbs is modelled in a data-driven way by means of distributional semantic methods. Over the remainder of the seminar, Dr Perek will also give a three-part course on experimental methods, to train participants in designing and implementing effective experiments for linguistic studies.
The workshop is part of a longer stay of Dr Perek in Brazil. Prior to the conference, he will speak at the Fluminense Federal University in nearby Niterói. In the following week, he will meet the FrameNet Brazil team in Juiz de Fora for extensive discussions.