Nadine Dietrich

Teaching fellow in Cognitive Linguistics

  • Linguistics and English Language
  • School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences

Contact details

Address

Street

Room 6.06
Dugald Stewart Building
3 Charles Street, Edinburgh
EH8 9AD

City
Post code

Biography

Qualifications

2024 PhD Linguistics and English Language, The University of Edinburgh

  • Thesis: Semasiological and onomasiological conditions for semantic-grammatical innovations: a study of semantic-grammatical innovations in the development of be going to

2020 MA Linguistics, University of Cologne

  • Thesis: Verb-semantic factors in the development of the English futurate progressive

2016 BA English Studies and Media Studies, Ruhr-University Bochum

  • Thesis: The development of do-support in Early and Late Modern English

 

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

No

Research summary

My main research interests is in usage-based approaches to language change, especially in grammaticalization and the role of semantic innovation in grammaticalization. My PhD  investigated  semasiological and onomasiological cognitive conditions that would allow speakers to use constructions innovatively. I specifically looked at these conditions for the semantic development of be going to from a control verb to a future-time expression. For future research I intend to investigate actuation. My other research interests lie in the semanics of futurity and modality.

Conference details

2023

August 2023. "Debunking the pure-future myth: Towards a fully modal conception of futurity in English". 16th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf.

March 2023. "Semasiological and onomasiological conditions for innovation emergence: the case of be going to". Futures of the Past Workshop, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf.

2022

August 2022. "Back to be going to again:  Arguments for the seamlessness of semantic innovations." 25th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL), University of Oxford.

July 2022. "Explaining specialisation and cross-meaning competition: the case of ‘command’ and ‘epistemic’ WILL and MUST." Workshop on Variation, Contact and Modal constructions, University of Paris.

2021

August 2021. "Tackling problems with polysemy and variation: Towards high-definition constructions." 11th International conference on Construction Grammar (ICCG), University of Antwerp.

July 2021. "The importance of constructional semantics in historical corpus analysis: Origins and semantic changes of the English futurate progressive." 11th International Corpus Linguistics Conference (CL), University of Limerick.

June 2021. "The seamlessness of grammaticalization." 6th Conference of the International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE), University of Eastern Finnland.

2020

November 2020. "Interacting Factors in Grammaticalization: Source, Usage in Context, Paradigm". 68th Studentische Tagung Sprachwissenschaft (StuTS), Berlin.

2019

May 2019. "Rethinking Modality: Modality in its semantic neighbourhood." Manchester Forum in Linguistics, University of Manchester.

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