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The research unit Variation, Linguistic Change and Grammaticalization was established in the 1990s by Professor Teresa Fanego and a team of scholars based at the Department of English and German of the University of Santiago de Compostela.

We carry out corpus-based research on grammatical change in the history of English, on changes going on in Present-day English, and on varieties of English generally. On a broader level, we are interested in typological issues in the field of cognitive-functional linguistics, with a focus on grammaticalization processes and Construction Grammar.

Our team is also involved in developing tools and resources for research in the field. We are partners in the international consortium of universities carrying out the expansion and tagging of ARCHER (A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers), and have compiled the Corpus of Historical English Law Reports 1535-1999 (CHELAR).

The unit has received funding from the European Regional Development Fund and other authorities and organizations, as follows:

  1. 01/08/1991-01/08/1994: Spanish Ministry for Education and Culture (grant PB90-0370; €15.025). PI: Teresa Fanego
  2. 01/08/1995-01/08/1998: Spanish Ministry for Education and Culture (grant PB94-0619; €18.030). PI: Teresa Fanego
  3. 01/10/1998-01/10/2001: Spanish Ministry for Education and Culture (grant PB97-0507; €19.532). PI: Teresa Fanego
  4. 01/08/2001-01/08/2004: Regional Government of Galicia (grant PGIDT01PXI20404PR; €37.142). PI: Teresa Fanego
  5. 28/12/2001-27/12/2004: Spanish Ministry for Science and Technology (grant BFF2001-2914; €48.519 + 1 four-year research position). PI: Teresa Fanego
  6. 14/08/2002-13/08/2005: Regional Government of Galicia (grant PGIDIT02PXIC20402PN; €20.621). PI: Teresa Fanego
  7. 28/12/2004-27/12/2007: Spanish Ministry for Education and Science (grant HUM2004-00940; €77.920 + 1 four-year research position). PI: Teresa Fanego
  8. 12/07/2005-12/07/2008: Regional Government of Galicia (grant PGIDIT05PXIC20401PN; €21.100). PI: Teresa Fanego
  9. 20/12/2006-19/12/2008: Regional Government of Galicia (grant 2006/14-0; €73.125), for the research network English Linguistics Circle (ELC). Principal Investigator: Teresa Fanego
  10. 01/03/2007-28/02/2008: Spanish Ministry for Education and Science & Regional Government of Galicia (grant 2006-19; €34.000). Principal Investigator: Teresa Fanego
  11. 01/01/2008-31/12/2010: Regional Government of Galicia (grant 2008/047; €150.000), for the research network English Linguistics Circle (ELC). PI: Teresa Fanego
  12. 02/08/2008-01/08/2011: Regional Government of Galicia (INCITE grant 08PXIB204016PR; €33.810). PI: Teresa Fanego
  13. 01/01/2009-31/12/2010: funding from the Regional Government of Galicia (grant 2009/047; €120.000), for the network Corpus design and annotation. PI: Guillermo Rojo
  14. 01/10/2007-30/09/2012: Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation (CONSOLIDER grant HUM2007-60706; €121.000 + 1 four-year research position). PI: Teresa Fanego
  15. 01/01/2011-31/12/2012: renewed funding from the Regional Government of Galicia (grant CN2011/011; €120.000), for the research network English Linguistics Circle (ELC). PI: Teresa Fanego
  16. 31/12/2011-31/12/2014: funding from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for the projects "Constructionalization and grammaticalization in English” (grant FFI2011-26693-C02-01; €108.900 + 1 four-year research position) and “Morphosyntactic variation in New Englishes” (grant FFI2011-26693-C02-02; €27.830). These projects were carried out in coordination at the Universities of Santiago de Compostela (PI: María José López-Couso) and the Balearic Islands (PI: Cristina Suárez-Gómez).
  17. 01/01/2012-31/12/2015: Fund for Scientific Research - Flanders (FWO): "The development of nominal and verbal gerunds from Middle to Late Modern English: towards a semantic and discourse-functional analysis" (grant G0A5412N; €261.700). PI: Liesbet Heyvaert (University of Leuven); other researchers involved: Teresa Fanego, Hubert Cuyckens, Hendrik De Smet.
  18. 01/01/2012-30/11/2014: funding to the VLCG group from the Regional Government of Galicia (grant CN2012/012; €70.000). PI: Teresa Fanego.
  19. 01/01/2014-30/12/2015: funding from the Regional Government of Galicia (grant R2014/016; €120.000), for the research network English Linguistics Circle (ELC). PI: Teresa Fanego.
  20. 08/10/2014-30/11/2016: funding to the VLCG group from the Regional Government of Galicia (grant GPC2014/004; €70 000). PI: Teresa Fanego.
  21. 01/12/2014-30/11/2016: funding from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (grant FFI2014-51873-REDT; €15.000), for the research network English Linguistics Circle (ELC). PI: Ignacio Palacios.
  22. 01/01/2015 - 31/12/2017: funding from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (National Programme for Excellence in Scientific and Technical Research; grant FFI2014-52188-P). €89.540, plus one four-year PhD research position, for the project "Exploring gradience and constructionalization in linguistic variation: evidence from contemporary and historical English", carried out in collaboration with research teams from the Universities of KU Leuven and Edinburgh. PI: Teresa Fanego.
  23. 01/09/2017 - 30/10/2017: Axuda Singular de Apoio á Investigación 2017. Funding Institution: Vicerreitoría de Investigación e Innovación da Universidade de Santiago de Compostela; 1.200 euros. PI: Teresa Fanego.
  24. 01/01/2017 - 31/12/2019: grant ED431D 2017/09, Axudas do Programa de Consolidación e Estruturación de Unidades de Investigación Competitivas – Rede de Investigación "English Linguistics Circle". Funding institution: Regional Government of Galicia, Directorate General for Scientific and Technological Promotion; 120.000 euros. PI: Teresa Fanego.
  25. 01/01/2017 - 31/12/2019: grant ED431B 2017/12, Axudas do Programa de Consolidación e Estruturación de Unidades de Investigación Competitivas – GPC. Funding institution: Regional Government of Galicia, Directorate General for Scientific and Technological Promotion; 90.000 euros. PI: Teresa Fanego.
  26. 01/01/2018 - 30/09/2021: funding from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (National Programme for Excellence in Scientific and Technical Research) for the project “Constructionalization in contemporary and earlier English: Cognitive, variationist and discourse-pragmatic perspectives”. Grant FFI2017-86884-P; 49.610 euros plus one four-year PhD research position. PIs: María José López-Couso & Belén Méndez-Naya.
  27. 16/10/2018: funding awarded by the Vicerrectorate for Research and Innovation of the University of Santiago de Compostela for the publication in open access of Q1 (JCR) articles. Grant 02-2018-MODA.2-1306; 1.700 euros. PI: Teresa Fanego.
  28. 11/07/2019: funding awarded by the Vicerrectorate for Research and Innovation of the University of Santiago de Compostela for the publication in open access of Q1 (JCR / SJR) articles. Grant 2019/3612; 1.575 euros. PI: Teresa Fanego.
  29. 29/10/2019: funding awarded by the Vicerrectorate for Research and Innovation of the University of Santiago de Compostela for the publication in open access of Q1 (JCR / SJR) articles. Grant 2019/PU-036; 1.625 euros. PI: Teresa Fanego.
  30. 01/01/2020 - 31/12/2022: grant ED431B 2020/01, Axudas do Programa de Consolidación e Estruturación de Unidades de Investigación Competitivas – GPC. Funding institution: Regional Government of Galicia, Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Universidade; 90.000 euros. PI: Teresa Fanego.
  31. 30/11/2020: funding awarded by the Vicerrectorate for Research and Innovation of the University of Santiago de Compostela for the publication in open access of two Q1 (JCR / SJR) articles. Grants amounting to 1.917 and 1.178 euros. PI: Teresa Fanego.
  32. 01/09/2021 - 31/08/2024: grant PID2020-114604GB-100 (Programa Estatal de Generación de Conocimiento, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación) for the project "Constructionalization in written and oral discourse: Evidence from historical and contemporary English(es)"; 42.350 euros plus one four-year PhD research position. PIs: María José López-Couso & Belén Méndez-Naya.
  33. 12/07/2021: Axudas para Financiamento de Equipamentos de Investigación 2021 (2.300 euros), Regional Government of Galicia and Vicerrectorate for Research and Innovation of the University of Santiago de Compostela. PI: Teresa Fanego.
  34. 14/10/2022: funding awarded (2.747 euros) by the Vicerrectorate for Scientific Policy of the University of Santiago de Compostela for the publication in open access of a Q1 (JCR / SJR) article. PI: Teresa Fanego.
  35. 01/06/2023: grant IZSEZ0_213179/1 awarded by the Swiss National Science Fund (SNSF) for the project "Superlative Object Constructions in Late Modern American English"; 3.500 euros. PIs: Tamara Bouso-Rivas & Marianne Hundt (U. of Zurich)..
  36. 01/01/2023 - 30/11/2025: grant ED431B 2023/03, Axudas do Programa de Consolidación e Estruturación de Unidades de Investigación Competitivas – GPC. Funding institution: Regional Government of Galicia, Consellería de Cultura, Educación, Formación Profesional e Universidades; 90.000 euros. PIs: Teresa Fanego & María José López-Couso.
  37. 01/09/2024-31/08/2027: grant PID2023-146887NB-I00, Programa Estatal de Generación de Conocimiento, Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, for the project "Constructions and constructionalization in earlier and contemporary English(es)", 109.500 euros plus one four-year PhD research position. PIs: María José López-Couso & Belén Méndez-Naya.

We have hosted some of the most important international conferences on linguistics, such as the Eleventh International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (11 ICEHL), in September 2000, the Third International Conference New Reflections on Grammaticalization (NRG3), in July 2005, and the 34th Conference of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME34), in May 2013. In September 2025 we will be hosting ISLE 8 (8th Conference of the International Society for the Linguistics of English).

We regularly collaborate with other colleagues and departments engaged in research on grammaticalization, historical linguistics and corpus linguistics, and are or have been partners in the following research projects and consortia:

2009-present, under British Academy Research Grant SG-101087: partner in the international consortium of universities carrying out the expansion and tagging of ARCHER, the diachronic corpus of British and American English registers originally compiled by Douglas Biber (Northern Arizona) and Edward Finegan (Southern California) in the early 1990s.

2006-2019, under grants 2006/14-0, 2008/047, CN2011/011, R2014/016 and ED431D 2017/09 (Regional Government of Galicia) and FFI2014-51873-REDT (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness): research network English Linguistics Circle, involving our team and the teams SPERTUS (Spoken English Research at the University of Santiago de Compostela; Director: Ignacio Palacios), Cognitive Processes and Behaviour (University of Santiago de Compostela; Director: Isabel Fraga), Language Variation and Textual Categorisation (University of Vigo; Director: Javier Pérez-Guerra), and Methods and Materials for the Teaching and Acquisition of Foreign Languages (University of Vigo; Director: Rosa Alonso).

2015-2017, under grant FFI2014-52188-P (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness): project on "Exploring gradience and constructionalization in linguistic variation: evidence from contemporary and historical English", jointly with Graeme Trousdale (Univ. of Edinburgh), Hubert Cuyckens (KU Leuven), Hendrik De Smet (KU Leuven) and Liesbet Heyvaert (KU Leuven).

2009-2010, under grant 2009/047 from the Regional Government of Galicia: network "Corpus Design and Annotation", together with eight other research groups from the Universities of Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña and Vigo. The network was coordinated by Guillermo Rojo, Professor of Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Santiago de Compostela.

2008-2011, under INCITE grants 08PXIB204016PR/1 and 08PXIB204016PR/2: joint project, with the team Language Variation and Textual Categorisation (University of Vigo; Director: Javier Pérez-Guerra), on "Constructionalization in the history of English: syntactic and cognitive perspectives".

2007-2012, under CONSOLIDER grant HUM2007-60706: joint project on "Linguistic Change and Grammaticalization" with the Functional Linguistics Group of the University of Leuven (Directors: Hubert Cuyckens and Kristin Davidse) and the Chair for English Linguistics of the University of Bamberg (Director: Manfred Krug).

  
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