Semantics and pragmatics of final connectives

• Grant number: 06/00342-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: April 24, 2006
• End date: July 23, 2006
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Agreement: DAAD
• Principal Investigator: Eliana Gabriela Fischer
• Grantee: Eliana Gabriela Fischer
• Host Investigator: Hardarik Blühdorn
• Institution abroad: Institut für Deutsche Sprache (IDS), Germany
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

During the period from April 25 to July 24, 2006, I intend to develop a research aiming at the semantics and pragmatics of final connectives in German language. This research integrates a wider contrastive work that shall encompass the syntax, as well as the semantics and pragmatics of logical connectives, both in German and Portuguese languages. Results of this research on the syntax of final connectives have been presented during the 11th Congress of Latin American Germanists, and then published in 2005, in the proceedings of the Congress (please, refer to bibliography). In this present stage of the work I intend to further investigate the semantics and pragmatics of final connectives in German language, based on the theoretical framework which is being developed by a team of German linguists at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache (IDS - refer to www.ids-mannheim.de), in Mannheim, Germany. This team is now preparing a comprehensive handbook on the semantics of connectives in German. One of the members of this team is Prof. Dr. Hardarik Blühdorn (www.ids-mannheim.de/gra/personal/bluehdorn.html), who is willing to be my research partner during my stay in Germany. In 2003 this research group has launched a handbook focusing on the syntax of connectives (refer to Pasch et al. 2003), and in 2004 the first comments on the semantics of connectives (refer to Blühdorn et al. 2004) have been published, which outlined the temporal, concessive, and causality connectives. Since there are still no conclusive works about final connectives, therefore my research will also contribute positively to the ongoing researches performed by the IDS. (AU)