FWF-Project "Database Dicoadverbe" (2002-2005)

French short adverbs of the type couper court

• Funding: FWF (P 15806 Single project)
• Project duration: 1.9.2002 until 31.8.2005

Team

• Project manager: Martin Hummel
• Technical management: Karin Stiegler
• Members of staff: Steffen Heidinger, Elke Lackner
• Computer specialist: Thorsten Zerha

The main result of this project was an online accessible database dicoadverbe. It is technically maintained by the Centre for Information Modelling and Digital Humanities (ZIM) of the University of Graz. It contains approximately 13.000 annotated data for French short adverbs ranging from the 11th century until today.

Constructions of the type couper court, parler vrai, etc. previously had been largely neglected or attributed to either informal varieties or to the substandard in French linguistics and, particularly, in the field of lexicography. Solely a part of these constructions are accepted within standard French. Adjective-adverbs have, however, been frequently used in the old language as well as in current regional varieties. This tradition originates in the adverbial use of adjectives being the sole mechanism of adverb formation which Romance languages have inherited from Latin. This project's objective was a comprehensive documentation of the usage of adjective-adverbs in the diachrony of the French language in order to stimulate further research.