Projects

This research project focuses on the relationship between syntactic processing in language and music, both at the level of global structural configuration and at the level of specific syntactic rules. We shall use paradigms of (musical) syntactic priming and syntactic interference research. This project will contribute to linguistic syntax processing research, and further introduce music as a domain of research.

One of the major functions of language is to convey information between speakers and hearers. Speakers have several linguistic means at their disposal to structure the information they want to communicate, e.g. active (Nous avons pris la décision) vs passive sentences (La décision a été prise) refer to the same referential content but the way in which the information is structured differs. Information Structure (IS) is a ...

The project focusses on the semantics and syntax of generic sentences. A number of corpus- and questionnairestudies are carried out to shed light on the variation in Dutch with regard to the use and interpretation of different types of nominal constituents in a number of syntactic positions in generic sentences.

This project is an investigation of the syntactic properties of the expression of possessor relations in Flemish, both at the level of the noun phrase (as in Jan zijn boek 'John's book', lit. 'Jan his book') and at the level of the sentence (as in Jan is zijn fiets gestolen, 'John's bicycle was stolen', lit. 'Jan was his bicycla stolen'). The focus is on patterns in which the possessor is removed from the possessum.

This project fits within the research into the possibly universal polysemy of perception verbs, but concentrates especially on a very complex but neglected element. More particularly, the project aims at the systematic analysis of the semantic and syntactic characteristics of sentir in Spanish and in comparative perspective with other Romance languages (French, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan).

The aim of this project is to develop principled analyses of four aspects of Korean jussive clauses: (i) the precise semantic formalization of the pragmatic information encoded by jussive particles; (ii) mapping of the pragmatic information onto syntax and the embeddability of jussive clauses; explaining how (iii) negative and (iv) coordinated jussive clauses behave differently from other types of clauses.

The proposed PhD Project aims at studying Information Structure (IS) of Kikongo. Such study is unprecedented for a western Bantu language. The research is both descriptive and comparative, since IS of different Kikongo languages will be compared. Moreover, a historical dimension will be added through the integration of the oldest remaining written Bantu sources (17th century), which are in Kikongo.

In this research soil quality in varying agro-ecosystems wil be assessed mainly through soil physical (soil structure) and biological (mainly mesofauna) properties. The impact of varying types of agricultural management on soil quality will be linked with differences in soil functions (yields, N mineralization, disease suppressiveness) to improve the sustainability of Cuban agriculture and to increase food security.

At the moment, food security of Cuban housholds is based on food produced bij large scale industrial farms and food imports. Increasing interest of policy makers and support in nos given to smaller scale productions, using less inputs, and hence contributing to a more sustainable agricultural system. This phd research will analyse thepotential of low scale farming to contribute to food security.