I am a postdoctoral researcher of the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) at Ghent University. My research concerns syntactic variation and change in unstandardised Germanic varieties. In my current research project I focus on V2 violations in French Flemish (Frans-Vlaams) under the supervision of Anne Breitbarth and Liliane Haegeman. It includes the creation of a parsed and tagged corpus of French Flemish spoken data from 91 different locations, with over 50 hours of spontaneously spoken language, which will be part of the Corpus of Southern Dutch Dialects (GCND).

My PhD thesis (2018) concerned the distribution of null pronominal arguments (esp. referential null subjects), resumptives and gaps in relative clauses and double agreement phenomena in inversion contexts in the Middle Low German dialects. Based on this research, specific tags needed for the creation of a tagged and parsed corpus of Middle Low German (a part of the Corpus of Historical Low German (CHLG)) could be developed. My supervisors were Anne Breitbarth (UGent) and Veronique Hoste (UGent), the external committee members were Sheila Watts (University of Cambridge) and George Walkden (Universität Konstanz).

My research interests include amongst others corpus linguistics and corpus construction (especially parsed corpora), language variation and change and historical linguistics. Before I started with my PhD, I helped to realise the projects Dialectloket and Stemmen uit het verleden as a member of the team of the Woordenboek van de Vlaamse Dialecten. I usually publish in English or German, though my native language is West-Flemish, a Dutch dialect.

I am a member of the international professional research associations Verein für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung (VndS) and Generative Linguistics in the Old World (GLOW) and affiliated with the Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics (AMC). Furthermore, I was an invited student at the University of Cambridge at the Department of German and Dutch, within the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages (Lent Term 2017).

Upcoming conference papers, posters and invited talks

Conference papers & posters

05/02/2015: With Anne Breitbarth, Veronique Hoste & Mariya Koleva. 'A parsed corpus of Historical Low German', The 25th Meeting of Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands (CLIN25) – Antwerp, Belgium
19/05/2015: 'Creating a tagged and parsed corpus of Historical Low German', Medieval Seminar Series Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies – Ghent, Belgium
30/05/2015: With Anne Breitbarth. 'Null subjects in Middle Low German', The 17th Diachronic Generative Syntax conference (DiGS17) – Reykjavík, Iceland
08/06/2015: With Mariya Koleva, Veronique Hoste & Anne Breitbarth. 'Towards a Part-of-speech Tagger for Middle Low German', Annual Language & Communication Technologies Meeting – Groningen, the Netherlands
09/06/2015: 'The Corpus of Historical Low German', Poster presentation Doctorandicolloquium van de Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte van de Universiteit Gent 2015 – Ghent, Belgium (shared 3rd place in the poster competition)
09/10/2015: 'Kongruenzauffälligkeiten in mittelniederdeutschen Relativsätzen', Regionale Sprache. 4. Nachwuchskolloquium des Vereins für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung (VndS) – Münster, Germany
04/2016: With Anne Breitbarth: 'Null subjects in Middle Low German', 39th Generative Linguistics in the Old World (GLOW 2016) – Göttingen, Germany
09/04/2016: With Anne Breitbarth, Sheila Watts & George Walkden: 'The Corpus of Historical Low German - a tagged and parsed corpus of historical Low German - Nottingham, United Kingdom
15/04/2016: With Anne Breitbarth: 'Project presentation of A parsed Corpus of Historical Low German (Medieval Seminar Lunch Meeting) - Ghent, Belgium
21/04/2016: 'Pronominal gaps in Middle Low German', DiaLing - Ghent, Belgium
16/05/2016: With Anne Breibarth & Mariya Koleva: 'Neue Methoden zur Erforschung des Mittelniederdeutschen: Computergestützte Werkzeuge im CHLG', Pfingsttagung des Vereins für Niederdeutsche Sprachforschung 2016 – Stendal, Germany
07/06/2016: With Mariya Koleva and Elisabeth Witzenhausen: ‘Challenges of Tagging and Parsing Middle Low German’, CLARIN-D Forum CA3 2016 – Hamburg, Germany
09/06/2016: 'Relative clauses in Middle Low German', 1st Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics (AMC) Colloquium – Edinburgh, United Kingdom
10/06/2016: With Mariya Koleva: 'The role of language variation in constructing a Middle Low German corpus', 1st Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics (AMC) Colloquium – Edinburgh, United Kingdom
01/07/2016: 'Agreement chains in Middle Low German relative clauses', The 18th Diachronic Generative Syntax conference (DiGS18) - Ghent, Belgium
04/11/2016: 'Vortmer bidde wi unde manen alle guode lude... Double agreement in the Middle Low German dialects', Saarbrücker Runder Tisch für Dialektsyntax (SaRDiS 2016) - Saarbrücken, Germany
02/12/2016: 'Apparent competing agreement patterns in Middle Low German non-restrictive relative clauses', Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop (CGSW31) - Stellenbosch University, South Africa
08/2017: 'Apparent variation in non-restrictive relative clauses in the Middle Low German dialects', Methods in Dialectology XVI - National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, Tachikawa, Japan
08/2017: With Anne Breitbarth: 'New methods for Middle Low German dialect research', Methods in Dialectology XVI - National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, Tachikawa, Japan
09/2017: 'Origin and analysis of deletion in inversion in Middle Low German', Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop (CGSW32) - Trondheim, Norway
26/10/2017: 'Position-dependent agreement in the Middle Low German plural verbal paradigm', DiaLing talk - Ghent, Belgium
29/11/2017: 'The parsed Corpus of Historical Low German (CHLG)', LW Research Day 2017 - Ghent, Belgium
19/06/2018: 'V2 violations in French Flemish', DOCTorIales de LINGuistique du laboratoire STL (Doctiling 2018) - Lille, France
20/10/2018: With Anne Breitbarth, Anne-Sophie Ghyselen & Jacques Van Keymeulen. ' Ge had dien een keer moeten en zien. Het Geparste en Gesproken Corpus van de zuidelijk-Nederlandse Dialecten (KZM, herfstvergadering) - Gent, Belgium
11/2018: With Anne Breitbarth, Anne-Sophie Ghyselen, Liliane Haegeman & Jacques Van Keymeulen. 'New resources for the study of Southern Dutch dialect syntax', Saarbrücker Runder Tisch für Dialektsyntax (SaRDiS 2018) - Saarbrücken, Germany
06/12/2018: Nature and origin of V2-violations French Flemish (DiaLing Talk) - Gent, Belgium
13/12/2018: With Anne Breitbarth, Anne-Sophie Ghyselen & Jacques Van Keymeulen. 'A parsed corpus of Southern Dutch dialects', Workshop on Spoken Corpus Linguistics (LingCor 2018) - València, Spain
14/02/2018: With Anne Breitbarth, Anne-Sophie Ghyselen & Jacques Van Keymeulen. 'What linguistics reveal about rusted bicycles and hoop making', The Italian Association of Speech Sciences Annual Conference XV (AISV XV) – Arezzo, Italy

Invited talks and guest lectures

29/06/2019: 'Parsingstrategien für das Corpus of Historical Low German', Im Spannungsfeld von Literaturwissenschaft, Sprachwissenschaft und Digital Humanities. Möglichkeiten der Erschließung und Analyse mittelniederdeutscher Texte - Göttingen, Germany
17/05/2019: 'Dialectloket. Stemmen uit het verleden. Op weg naar een "Gesproken Corpus van de Nederlandse Dialecten' - Sint-Niklaas, Belgium
12/03/2019: 'V2-Verletzungen im Französisch-Flämischen: Beschaffenheit, Ursprung und Variation' in 'Go Dutch! Aktuelle Themen der Niederlandistik' – Zürich, Switzerland
12/03/2019: 'De laatste Frans-Vlaamse dialecten: geschiedenis en staat van het Nederlands in Noord-Frankrijk' in 'Groeien, snoeien, bloeien' – Zürich, Switzerland
08/03/2019: 'Stemmen uit het verleden. Over gesproken corpora en de studie van dialectsyntaxis' in 'De zin van het Nederlands' – Zürich, Switzerland
05/03/2019: 'Zugehörig oder besonders? Erkenntnisse über Kongruenzphänomene im Mittelniederdeutschen' in 'Go Dutch! Aktuelle Themen der Niederlandistik' – Zürich, Switzerland
10/05/2016: With Anne Breitbarth: 'Relative clauses in Middle Low German'. Talk at Kolloquium der Forschergruppe Relativsätze, Uni Frankfurt/Main.
15/10/2015: 'Agreement patterns in Middle Low German non-restrictive relative clauses', Com(parative) Syn(tax) Meetings – Leiden, the Netherlands

Manuscripts

Farasyn, Melissa. 2017b. Deletion in the verbal paradigm in Middle Low German: an interface phenomenon. Ms., Ghent University.

Popularisation

22/11/2020: Participation Digitale Dag van de Wetenschap 2020 (Digital Science Day 2020): Knowledge clip on studying the syntax of French Flemish: ‘Een eeuwenlange lockdown: de Vlaamse dialecten in Noord-Frankrijk’ (clip + script)
30/09/2020: “Van de ‘schreve’ tot de ‘sjeeïng’ begrijpen we elkaar (min of meer)”. Interview in weekly magazine Kerk & Leven on the status of language varieties and the study of language variety in Belgium.
10/02/2020: ‘Mensentaal: Waar is de meisje?’ (Anne Breitbarth & Melissa Farasyn)
Radio interview on dialectology and historical linguistics for Urgent FM in the program ‘Mensentaal’, which explains research in an understandable way.
24/06/2019: ‘Vrijwilligersevenement GCND’, event for volunteers, to share the results and goals of our projects with volunteers who are checking and correcting transcriptions GCND and from my current postdoctoral project on French Flemish.
28/04/2019: With Lien Hellebaut, Veronique De Tier, Jacques Van Keymeulen, Anne Breitbarth and Anne-Sophie Ghyselen: 'Hoe maakten ze het vroeger? Dialectstemmen uit een ambachtelijk Oost-Vlaams verleden' - participation Erfgoeddag 2019 (Ghent, Belgium)
19/04/2019: interview in newspaper Krant van West-Vlaanderen: “Het West-Vlaams is een wereldtaal” (appeared in the annex “Het beste van West-Vlaanderen” of the Krant van West-Vlaanderen)
22/03/2019: call for volunteers to check the Franco-Flemish transcriptions from the article: “UGent zoekt vrijwilligers om Frans-Vlaams uit te tikken” (appeared in the Krant van West-Vlaanderen)
23/11/2014: participation Wetenschapsfestival 'Waar of niet waar?' with the redaction of the Dictionary of the Flemish Dialects (Ghent, Belgium)
27/04/2014: co-organisation of exhibition 'Grenzen in het dialectlandschap' ('bounadaries in the dialectal landscape') - participation Erfgoeddag 2014 (Ghent, Belgium