Blog CRC1646

From 12^th of November to 9^th of December 2025, the postdoctoral fellow Désirée Kleineberg from project A06 profited from the outgoing scholarships of CRC 1646 and seized the opportunity for a research stay at the KU Leuven (Belgium). She was hosted by the research group of Functional and Cognitive Linguistics (FunC). This research group investigates grammar from a cross-linguistic perspective, focusing on form-function relations, the general architecture of grammatical systems and diachronic evolution of grammatical constructions. With this research focus, the FunC group was a perfect match for Désirée’s research on the evolution of verbal periphrases in the Romance languages. In her current studies, she concentrates on the evolution of competition between various constructions which have the same function, and possible outcomes of those processes – in short: the question why some linguistic innovations are successful and others not.

During her stay, she had the opportunity to discuss her studies, the theoretical modelling and methodological questions with colleagues like Hendrik De Smet, Bert Cornillie, Anna Kisiel, or María Sol Sansiñena. The fact that we were able to welcome Hendrik De Smet to the Bielefeld colloquium just one week after Désriée's stay to give a lecture on "In language change, analogy is like gravity: omnipresent, weak and poorly understand" is proof that the connections between the CRC 1646 and our colleagues at the KU Leuven are manifold and exist in both directions. On the 18^th of December she presented the CRC and her work in the FunC-Colloquium (“On “failed” changes – The (rise and) decline of Fr. ”) and on the 3rd of December in a student’s course on language variation and change in French (“Évolution de la périphrase - Analyse des facteurs contextuels de son déclin du 15e au 18e siècle)”.

Luckily, there was also time to explore the beautiful historical city of Leuven, make some trips to nearby cities and to eat one or the other Belgian waffle!

After a month which was packed full with fruitful discussions, productive writing and some thorough reflections on theoretical concepts like competition, differentiation and success of linguistic creativity, Désirée came back full of inspiration and motivation to continue her work in project A06.

Central University Library, Foto: Désirée Kleineberg © SFB 1646

River Dijle at Groot Begijnhof, Foto: Désirée Kleineberg © SFB 1646

Désirée Kleineberg, Foto: Sascha Hermannski © SFB 1646

Project A06, Foto: Sascha Hermannski © SFB 1646

Hintere Reihe, v.l.n.r.: Barbara Job, Tanja Ackermann, Said Sahel

Vordere Reihe, v.l.n.r.: Rebekka von Legat, Désirée Kleineberg