Main research paths
Syntactic structures of Spanish
It encompasses both the study of syntactic patterns with their functional constituents and the characteristics of the verbs as predicates of clauses. This line stems from the exploitation of the resources generated firstly by the group, such as the Spanish syntactic database (BDS), which records the features of about 160.000 clauses from a corpus of American and European Spanish.
Development of corpora, dictionaries, and other linguistic resources
Elaboration of spoken and written textual corpora for linguistic studies, as well as electronic linguistic resources for the development and exploitation of the corpora and for other types of applications. Following the construction of The Syntactic Database for modern Spanish / Base de datos sintácticos del español (BDS) from the ARTHUS corpus, the latest corpora compiled by the group are the Corpus of learners of Spanish / Corpus de aprendices de español (CAES), the Syntactically parsed corpus / Corpus sintácticamente analizado (CSA) and the Corpus for the study of spoken Spanish / Corpus para el estudio del español oral (ESLORA). The development of statistical tagging and applications for on-line consultation have been included. This line of research also encompasses the participation of the group in the development of the Corpus del Español del Siglo XXI (CORPES XXI) and the Corpus de referencia do galego actual (CORGA).
Spanish in situations of multilinguism-contact
The Spanish spoken in Galicia
Research focused on spoken Spanish through the development of new tools for the study and analysis of its constitutive aspects and its social function. The studies are based on the Corpus for the study of spoken Spanish / Corpus para el estudio del español oral (ESLORA) that encompasses semi-directed interviews carried out in Santiago de Compostela as part of the pan-Hispanic project PRESEEA and spontaneous colloquial conversations. One part of the investigation is aimed at morpho-syntactic tagging and the development of the search engine. The results allow the study of the dynamics and constitution of oral interactions from a multidimensional perspective: lexico-grammatical, discursive, pragmatic, sociolinguistic and ideological. Furthermore, this line is focused on the techniques for the elicitation of spoken samples and other complementary resources for the compilation of corpora. Additionally, the research offers insights into the possibilities of using spoken corpora in the field of teaching-learning Spanish as a second language.
History of the lexicon
Relationships between grammar and lexicon
Study of the lexical units of different classes and subclasses, focusing on their semantic features and their formal properties. The research is aimed at determining the different subclasses: nouns of event and result, relational and qualifying adjectives, shell nouns, adjectives with modal meanings, etc.
Derivational morphology of Spanish
This line focuses on the functioning of the derivation mechanisms and their productivity, both in contemporary and earlier Spanish, paying special attention to the structure of the processes and their morphological features. The most recent works are related to the design and the making of an on-line application that shows the relationships between words in the same lexical family. The application MORFOGEN has two modules: a) a database of Spanish morphology and b) a visualization tool that offers a global picture of the lexical family of each word. The lexical family brings together all those words which directly or indirectly are related to the same root. They could be cultured, popular or loanwords regardless of the degree of formal and semantic transparency of their derivative relationship.
Spanish as a foreign language
This line of research focuses on the following aspects:
Study of the different aspects related to language teaching: learning factors and strategies, methodological indications, components of communicative competence, development of linguistic skills, etc.
Analysis and elaboration of learning-teaching materials.
Use and exploitation of linguistic and learners corpora (spoken and written) as a source for the description of the working of the language and of the interlanguage of non- native speakers and for the elaboration of learner-teacher materials.
Analysis of different aspects of the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language: a) the attention paid to the intra-linguistic diversity in didactic materials; b) the learning strategies and the promotion of autonomous work through ICT; c) student mobility and language learning.
It is worth highlighting the experience of some team members in the development of a corpus of Spanish learners, the Corpus of learners of Spanish / Corpus de aprendices de español (CAES), a project supported and financed by the Instituto Cervantes.
Contrastive lexico-syntactic studies
A collection of contrastive studies with theoretical and applied interests with the following main objectives: a) the establishing of the combinatory potential of German, Spanish and Portuguese lexemes with semantic similarity, paying attention to the inter and the intra linguistic contrast; b) the application of the results specially relevant in the field of second and foreign language acquisition and, more specifically, in the contexts of production and translation. The theoretical interest is focused on the relationship between the lexical meaning and the combinatory characteristics.
Historiography of Linguistics
Historiographic analysis of the Spanish and Galician linguistic tradition with emphasis on the history of grammar. Some group members have published works on the current situation of Spanish linguistic historiography, history of the Spanish grammaticography, history of the Spanish orthographic theory and history of Galician linguistics. In addition, the presence of linguistic ideologies in the development of Spanish linguistics is currently being researched. Materials related to the teaching of Spanish as a first, second or foreign language are also being analysed and evaluated, both from a historiographic perspective and regarding current technological applications.