Project description
The rise of contrastive grammar in the Middle Ages
Despite today’s concerns about the challenges posed by migration, history reveals how migration could represent new opportunities and have a positive impact. The migration flow from the Byzantine Greek empire in the late Middle Ages and particularly after the fall of Constantinople in Europe represented a first major brain drain from the East to the West. Western Europeans met a new culture and a language with a rich cultural and grammatical tradition. The EU-funded MigraLing project will study the impact migrants had on the transformation of grammar from a monolingual Latin-centric specialised knowledge to a multilingual discipline taking into consideration that the teaching of the Greek language led to contrastive access to language studies.
Objective
Migration and its societal impact have never been higher on the agenda than in our globalized world, which is why it features prominently in the Horizon 2020 Work Programme 13. It is a challenge that not only poses problems, but also offers opportunities in various ways. The possibility of a positive impact of migration often tends to be neglected in present-day debates. History, however, demonstrates that optimistic expectations should not necessarily remain unattainable. The crumbling apart of the Byzantine Greek empire in the late Middle Ages, for instance, engendered a steady influx of Greek migrants into Western Europe during the Renaissance. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 further stimulated this population movement, triggering a first major brain drain from the Greek world. This confronted Western Europeans not only with another culture, but also with another language boasting a rich cultural and grammatical tradition, the full impact of which remains to be investigated. The proposed action aims to counter this state of affairs by studying an important linguistic dimension of this vast research lacuna: the way in which the Greek migrants contributed to transforming grammar from a monolingual, Latinocentric knowledge domain to a multilingual and flexible discipline. Indeed, their intensive teaching of the Greek language and its grammar was a key turning point in the history of linguistic thought, since it gave rise to a contrastive approach to language studies and education. It is this revolutionary development which the action intends to analyse by investigating Renaissance linguistic handbooks. In particular, it aims to study (A) how and why contrastive grammar emerged in the wake of Greek migration movements during the Renaissance, (B) how this related to the Greek migrants' teaching of Western European students, both male and female, and (C) what the impact of this new genre of language study was on later linguistic thought and praxis.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities languages and literature general language studies
- humanities languages and literature linguistics
- humanities history and archaeology history medieval history
- social sciences sociology demography human migrations
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
MAIN PROGRAMME
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H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2019
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
0313 Oslo
Norway
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.