About us
Research Areas
The mapping out of functional-cognitive space
The systematic comparison of the various approaches taken to language analysis
The study of constructions and discourse markers / relations
from descriptive, contrastive and acquisitional perspectives
A multidimensional analysis of registers, genres and text types
Especially with regard to the coherent construction of expressive / evaluative language
The production of materials and resources for educational use
to teach (and learn) English as a Second Language
SCIMITAR History
- More than 30 books
- More than 200 articles
- More than 20 reviews
In addition, the SCIMITAR group was responsible for the organization of three editions of the “International Contrastive Linguistics Conference” (ICLC), which were held in Santiago de Compostela in 2001, 2003 and 2005, and the group still plays an advisory role with respect to more recent ICLCs, which have been held in other locations. The following list includes these and other conferences that members of Scimitar have organized, or contributed to organize so far (from 1999 to present):
- 50th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. University of Zürich, Switzerland, 10-13 September 2017.
- 2nd International Conference on the Discourse of Identity. University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 8-9 June 2017.
- 8th International Contrastive Linguistics Conference (ICLC8). Athens, Greece, 25-28 May 2017.
- 4th Santiago de Compostela International Workshop on Discourse Analysis (IWoDA’16): The construction of discourse as social interaction. University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 28-30 September 2016.
- 3rd Santiago de Compostela International Workshop on Discourse Analysis (IWODA’15): Multivariate Statistical Analysis of Linguistic Data, a joint organization of Scimitar and Discourse and Indentity, in collaboration with partner research groups from the Universidade da Coruña. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 9-11 June, 2015.
- 7th International Contrastive Linguistics Conference (ICLC7). Ghent, Belgium, 10-13 July, 2013.
- 2nd Santiago de Compostela International Workshop on Discourse Analysis (IWoDA 2013), a joint organization of Scimitar and Discourse and Indentity in collaboration with three partner groups from the Universidade da Coruña, Amergin, Clin and Muste. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 19-21 June, 2013.
- 1st Conference on the Discourse of Identity (CoDoI 2012), a joint organization of the research groups SCIMITAR and Discourse & Identity. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 13-15 June, 2012.
- 1st Santiago de Compostela International Workshop on Discourse Analysis (IWoDA 2011), a joint organization of the research groups SCIMITAR and Discourse & Identity. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 5-9 September, 2011.
- 6th International Contrastive Linguistics Conference (ICLC6). Free University of Berlin, Germany, 30 September – 2 October, 2010.
- 5th International Contrastive Linguistics Conference (ICLC5). University of Leuven, Belgium, 7-9 July, 2008.
- 4th International Contrastive Linguistics Conference (ICLC4). University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 19-23 September, 2005.
- III Seminar on Foreign Languages Applied to Foreign Trade: “Workshop on Computer Applications: Teaching, Research and Business”. Santiago de Compostela, Spain, July, 2004.
- 3rd International Contrastive Linguistics Conference (ICLC3). University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 23-26 September, 2003.
- II Seminar on Foreign Languages Applied to Foreign Trade. University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, July, 2003.
- I Seminar on Foreign Languages Applied to Foreign Trade. University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain,July, 2002.
- 2th International Contrastive Linguistics Conference (ICLC2). University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 25-27 September, 2001.
- 1st International Contrastive Linguistics Conference (ICLC1). University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, September 1999.
SCIMITAR Funding
- 2017-2020: €120,000 from the Autonomous Government of Galicia under grant no. ED431D 2017/17
- 2015-2018: €278,500 from the Autonomous Government of Galicia under grant no. GRC2015/002 GI-1924
- 2014-2017: €54,450 from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for the project The construction of discourse as social interaction: Contrastive implications and applications under grant no. FFI2013-40517-P
- 2011-2015: Funding from Contrastive Linguistics: constructional and functional approaches, European Research Network Universiteit Gent, Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO)
- 2011-2013: €121,000 from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for the project Estudio Multidimensional de la Interfaz Gramática-Discurso en Lengua Inglesa II under grant no. FFI2010-19380
- 2009-2012: €55566 from the Autonomous Government of Galicia for the project Gramática, Discurso e Competencia Comunicativa en Lingua Inglesa: un enfoque multidisciplinar integrado under grant no. INCITE09 204 155 PR
- 2008-2010: €37182.09 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology and the European Regional Development Fund under grant no. HUM2007-62220/FILO
- 2007-2009: €180000 from the Autonomous Government of Galicia under grant no. 2007/000145-0/
- 2005-2008: €37182.09 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology and the European Regional Development Fund under grant no. HUM2005-00562/FILO
- 2003-2005: €33320 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology and the European Regional Development Fund under grant no. BFF2002-02441
- 2003-2005: €13000 from the Autonomous Government of Galicia under grant no. PGIDIT03PXIC20403PN
- 2003-2005: €9000 from the Simon Fraser University (BC, Canada)
- 2000-2003: €11419 and €13462 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology and the European Regional Development Fund under grant nos. BFF2000-1271 and BFF2000-0492 respectively
Other Funding
- 2014-2019: CND $400,000. from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for the project “Opinion, subjectivity and point of view in language”(SCIMITAR participant and main researcher: Maite Taboada).
- 2014-2016: Funding from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under grant no. FFI2013-43593-P for the project “Modelación Cognitiva y Construcción del Significado. Estudio Contrastivo: Teoría, Implicaciones y Aplicaciones” (SCIMITAR participant: Francisco Gonzálvez-García; Principal Researcher: Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez)
- 2010-2013: Funding from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under grant no. FFI2010-17610 for the project “Fundamentos para la construcción del nivel gramatical en el entorno de una base de conocimiento léxico-conceptual” (SCIMITAR participant: Francisco Gonzálvez-García; Principal Researcher: Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez)
- 2009-2012: €33875 from the Autonomous Government of Galicia under grant no. NCITE O9-204-127-PR for the project “Nos-outras: Discursos das escritoras irlandesas e galegas sobre a extranxeiría” (SCIMITAR participant: María Dolores Gómez Penas)
- 2008-2013: Can$100,000 from NSREC Discovery Grant to Maite Taboada for “Discourse parsing for summarization and sentiment detection”
- 2008-2010: €39,000 from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science to Maite Taboada for collaborative research with Julia Lavid and others on “Developing contrastive functional descriptions (English-Spanish) through corpus analysis and annotation”
- 2007-2009: €20,000 from the Complutense University of Madrid to Maite Taboada for collaborative research with Julia Lavid on “Corpus linguistics and contrastive learning in English and Spanish”
- 2006-2009: Can$71,147 from SSHRC to Maite Taboada for collaborative research with Manfred Stede of the University of Potsdam (Germany) on “Subject, topic and focus of attention in spoken language”
- 2004-2010: Can$200,000 from NSERC to Maite Taboada for her research
- 2004-2008: Can$72,000 from NSERC to Maite Taboada for “Computational analysis of text sentiment”
- 2004-2006: Can$10,000 from the President’s Research Grant to Maite Taboada for research into “Focus and pronominalization in spoken Spanish”