Dirk Geeraerts (born 24 October 1955) is a Belgian linguist. He is professor emeritus of

theoretical linguistics Theoretical linguistics is a term in linguistics that, like the related term general linguistics, can be understood in different ways. Both can be taken as a reference to the theory of language, or the branch of linguistics that inquires into the ...

at the University of Leuven,

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

. He is the founder of the research unit Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics (QLVL). His main research interests involve the overlapping fields of

lexical semantics Lexical semantics (also known as lexicosemantics), as a subfield of linguistics, linguistic semantics, is the study of word meanings.Pustejovsky, J. (2005) Lexical Semantics: Overview' in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, second edition, V ...

lexicology Lexicology is the branch of linguistics that analyzes the lexicon of a specific language. A word is the smallest meaningful unit of a language that can stand on its own, and is made up of small components called morphemes and even smaller elemen ...

, and

lexicography Lexicography is the study of lexicons and the art of compiling dictionaries. It is divided into two separate academic disciplines: * Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries. * Theoretical le ...

, with a theoretical focus on

cognitive semantics Cognitive semantics is part of the cognitive linguistics movement. Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning. Cognitive semantics holds that language is part of a more general human cognitive ability, and can therefore only describe the worl ...

. His involvement with

cognitive linguistics Cognitive linguistics is an interdisciplinary branch of linguistics, combining knowledge and research from cognitive science, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and linguistics. Models and theoretical accounts of cognitive linguistics are cons ...

dates from the 1980s, when in his PhD thesis he was one of the first in Europe to explore the possibilities of a prototype-theoretical model of categorization. As the founder of the journal ''Cognitive Linguistics'' and as the editor (with Hubert Cuyckens) of the ''Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics'', he played an instrumental role in the international expansion of cognitive linguistics. Geeraerts is one of the outspoken advocates of the implementation of empirical methodologies, such as

corpus linguistics Corpus linguistics is an empirical method for the study of language by way of a text corpus (plural ''corpora''). Corpora are balanced, often stratified collections of authentic, "real world", text of speech or writing that aim to represent a giv ...

in cognitive linguistic research. He also argues for the involvement of more pragmatic elements such as contextual factors, lectal variation, and language history that influence the construal of word meanings and the choice of lexical items for concepts.

Books

His publications include the following monographs: *D. Geeraerts, ''Paradigm and Paradox'' (1985). Leuven: Leuven University Press. *D. Geeraerts, ''Woordbetekenis'' (1986). Leuven: Acco. *D. Geeraerts, ''Wat er in een woord zit'' (1989) Leuven: Peeters. *D. Geeraerts, S. Grondelaers & P. Bakema, ''The Structure of Lexical Variation'' (1994). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. *D. Geeraerts, ''Diachronic Prototype Semantics'' (1997). Oxford: OUP. *D. Geeraerts, S. Grondelaers & D. Speelman, ''Convergentie en divergentie in de Nederlandse woordenschat'' (2000). Amsterdam: Meertens. *D. Geeraerts, ''Words and Other Wonders. Papers on Lexical and Semantic Topics'' (2006). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. *D. Geeraerts, ''Theories of Lexical Semantics'' (2010). Oxford: OUP. *D. Geeraerts, ''Conceptual Structure and Conceptual Variation'' (2017). Shanghai: Foreign Language Education Press. *D. Geeraerts, ''Ten Lectures on Cognitive Sociolinguistics'' (2018). Leiden: Brill. *D. Geeraerts, D. Speelman, K. Heylen, M. Montes, S. De Pascale, K. Franco, M. Lang (2024)
''Lexical Variation and Change. A Distributional Semantic Approach''
''.'' Oxford: OUP.

Honors

He is a member of the Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal en Letteren
KANTL
and the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

. His 60th birthday was celebrated by the publication of ''Change of Paradigms-New Paradoxes'' (J. Daems et al. 2015, De Gruyter Mouton). His retirement saw the publication of a special issue of the journal ''Nederlandse Taalkunde'' (2022:2), and another Festschrift: G. Kristiansen et al. 2021, ''Cognitive Sociolinguistics Revisited'' (De Gruyter Mouton).

External links

Career overview and academic bibliography 1978-2020Overview of his main publications, with summariesValedictory lecture October 29, 2021Website of the research unit QLVL
{{DEFAULTSORT:Geeraerts, Dirk 1955 births Living people Linguists from Belgium Belgian cognitive scientists Members of Academia Europaea