I am a member of the STL 'Savoirs, Textes, Langage' lab (UMR 8163, CNRS). My research falls within the first research domain of the lab (called Form, meaning and context), and in particular within themes 1 (Construction of meaning in context) and 2 (Languages: evolution and comparison) of this domain.

1. Linguistic theory and the semantics/pragmatics interface
At the heart of my research lies the question of meaning, and in particular the way in which meaning is co-constructed in context. As part of my PhD dissertation, since published by Cambridge University Press (Linguistic knowledge and language use, 2024), I compared different frameworks and built a theoretical bridge between Construction Grammar and Relevance Theory with an eye to obtaining an accurate and cognitively plausible model of the semantics/pragmatics interface. This research has led to the publication of a number of articles (Leclercq 2019, 2020, 2023) as well as an encyclopaedic entry (Leclercq to appear).
Recently, I've had the opportunity to develop some of my ideas in the context of national and international collaborations. With Cameron Morin (Université Paris Cité), for example, we have tried to redefine the sociopragmatic programme of Construction Grammar by putting forward a new approach to the principle of no synonymy, reformulated as the principle of no equivalence (Leclercq & Morin 2023). This work, initially theoretical, then gave way to a computational study in collaboration with Dirk Pijpops (KU Leuven). More generally, this shared interest for the Construction Grammar approach to meaning has led Cameron Morin and I to submit the manuscript The Meaning of Constructions (Cambridge University Press) in which we spell out in detail the way in which meaning is (or should be) operationalised in this theory.
Other projects are underway to shed more light, from an experimental point of view this time, on the different types of meaning (semantic, pragmatic and social) as well as on other phenomena such as good-enough comprehension.

2. Modality in English
My theoretical interest in questions relating to the semantics/pragmatics interface stems from the need for a precise analytical framework for the study of modal verbs in English, whose very rich meaning requires clear distinctions to be made. I first worked on this topic for my Master 2 thesis, in which I tried to pin down the distinctive properties of be able to, the most striking of which is that of actualisation (Leclercq & Depraetere 2022). Later on during my PhD, discovering the variety of constructions in which modals can appear, I then set out to find ‘n-grams’ with can, could and be able to in which the verbs inherit semantic and/or pragmatic features that could not be predicted from an individual analysis of each verb alone (Leclercq 2022).
A growing interest in the complexity of the modal domain led me to join the ANR-FNS project Rethinking English Modal constructions, the results of which are reported in a book published by Mouton De Gruyter (Models of modals, 2023). Working on the REM project's extensive database enabled me to pinpoint quantitative trends that has previously been insufficiently explored. This is the case, for instance, with the use of the verbs may and might in concessive constructions. Although this use of the two verbs was not unknown to me, I was surprised to note how frequent it was, which prompted me to carry out a diachronic analysis of the two verbs in concessive structures (Leclercq 2024). This study then led me to explore further the link between modality and post-modal meaning, such as that of concession. This is why I have embarked on a new diachronic study – in collaboration with Graeme Trousdale (University of Edinburgh) – to identify more clearly how modal verbs move towards post-modality (paper to be published in English Language and Linguistics).