Willkommen am Institut für Linguistik! Auf dieser Seite finden Sie alle wichtigen Informationen, die das Institut betreffen.

Sinn und Bedeutung 30 (SuB30) 2025 in Frankfurt

Die 30. Ausgabe der Konferenz Sinn und Bedeutung (SuB30) findet vom 23. bis 27. September 2025 an der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt statt und wird von der Professur für Semantik organisiert.

Die Konferenz umfasst:

• eine dreitägige Main Session (24.–26. September)

• zwei eintägige Special Sessions:

  • Beyond Descriptive Meaning: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Demonstrations and Depictions (LingDem) (September 23)
  • Philosophical and Linguistic Approaches to Negation (PhilLingNeg) (September 27)

Weitere Informationen unter: https://vicom.info/sub30/

Beste studentische Präsentation der MMSYM 2024 aus Frankfurt

Die Mitarbeiterin und Doktorandin Alina Gregori, sowie Vera Wolfrum (Uni Würzburg) gewinnen beide auf der diesjährigen MMSYM den Preis für die beste studentische Präsentation.

Beste studentische Präsentation der Speech-Prosody 2024 aus Frankfurt

Die Mitarbeiterin und Doktorandin Anna Preßler gewinnt auf der diesjährigen Speech-Prosody-Konferenz den Preis für die beste studentische Präsentation.

Jacob- und Wilhelm-Grimm-Preise für internationale Germanistik an Ermenegildo Bidese

Ermenegildo Bidese (Universität Trento) hat 2021 im Fachbereich Neuere Philologien in Frankfurt habilitiert. 2024 erhält er den Jacob- und Wilhelm-Grimm-Preise für die internationale Germanistik des DAAD.

Ende der Seminare = Beginn der Hausarbeiten

Mit dem Ende der Vorlesungszeit beginnt die Arbeit an den Hausarbeiten. Wir bitten alle Studierende, die Hausarbeiten oder Abschlussarbeiten in der Linguistik schreiben, sich an unserem Leitfaden zu orientieren.

Wir feiern Katharina Hartmanns 60. Geburtstag

Während des Geburtstagsworkshops „Syntax in Focus – A workshop in honour of Katharina Hartmann’s 60th birthday“ überreichten wir am 12.01.2024 die Festschrift zu Ehren von Katharina: „To the left, to the right, and much in between“. Sie kann hier kostenlos als Ebook (PDF) heruntergeladen werden.

Wir beglückwünschen das Institut für Linguistik zum neu bewilligten Sonderforschungsbereich NegLaB

Ab April 2024 startet an der Goethe Uni der neue Sonderforschungsbereich der DFG „Negation in Language and Beyond“ (SFB 1629 NegLaB). Das Institut für Linguistik ist mit zahlreichen Projekten am SFB maßgeblich beteiligt.

MA-Student Farbod Eslami Khouzani erhält den diesjährigen DAAD-Preis

Der MA-Linguistik-Student Farbod Eslami Khouzani (Bild, Mitte) erhielt am 05.10.2023 den diesjährigen DAAD-Preis für internationale Studierende. Gewürdigt wurden seine hervorragenden Studienleistungen wie auch sein gesellschaftliches Engagement. Wir gratulieren herzlich! Mehr Informationen

Prof. Katharina Hartmann und Prof. Frank Kügler nominiert für die beste Promotionsbetreuung

Das Goethe Research Academy for Early Career Researchers (GRADE) verleiht jedes Jahr einen Preis für die beste Promotionsbetreuung. Dieses Jahr sind gleich zwei der Professor*innen aus der Linguistik nominiert: Prof. Frank Kügler und Prof. Katharina Hartmann. Mehr Informationen

Informationen für Studienanfänger*innen

Das Institut für Linguistik der Goethe-Universität bietet in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Institut für England- und Amerikastudien, dem Institut für Psycholinguistik und Didaktik der deutschen Sprache und dem Institut für Romanische Sprachen und Literaturen zwei sprachwissenschaftliche Studiengänge an, den deutschsprachigen BA Linguistik sowie den englischsprachigen MA Linguistics, die beide ohne Nebenfach studiert werden. Außerdem bietet das Institut Veranstaltungen im Rahmen der Germanistik– und Lehramtsstudiengänge an.

Weiter Informationen:

• Ansprechpartner*innen
• Studienanfänger*innen
• Stundenpläne
• BA Linguistik
• MA Linguistics
• BA Germanistik
• Lehramtsstudium
• Erasmus-Programm (Studium im Ausland)
• Hinweise zu wissenschaftlichen Hausarbeiten

Überblick zur Forschung am Institut

Das in Frankfurt am Fachbereich 10 (Neuere Philologien) angesiedelte Institut für Linguistik kann besondere Expertise in den Bereichen Sprachstruktur (Syntax und Phonologie), Bedeutung (Semantik und Pragmatik), Psycholinguistik (Spracherwerb, Sprachverarbeitung) und historische Linguistik vorweisen – diese Bereiche werden von international bekannten Forscherpersönlichkeiten vertreten. Darüber hinaus bestehen enge Kontakte und über einzelne Projekte hinausgehende Kooperationen mit den Sprachwissenschaftlern in den Einzelphilologien am Fachbereich (Anglistik und Romanistik), mit der Philosophie (Fachbereich 8), und dem Institut für empirische Sprachwissenschaft am Fachbereich 9 (Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaften).

Neben dem Institut für Linguistik wird Linguistik in Forschung und Lehre auch in anderen Instituten betrieben. Details dazu finden Sie hier:

• Institut für England- und Amerikastudien,
• Institut für Psycholinguistik und Didaktik der deutschen Sprache
• Institut für Romanische Sprachen und Literaturen
• Institut für Empirische Sprachwissenschaften

Das Potenzial der Frankfurter Linguistik liegt vor allem im Bereich der linguistischen Grundlagenforschung. Die rege Forschungstätigkeit wird in diversen Projekten gebündelt.

Am Institut für Linguistik finden sich die folgenden Professuren:

• Professur Historische Linguistik (Weiß)
• Professur Phonologie (Kügler)
• Professur Psycholinguistik (Bader)
• Professur Semantik (Ebert)
• Professur Syntax (Hartmann)

In der Lehre sind dem Institut für Linguistik die folgenden Professuren angeschlossen:

• Professur für die Didaktik der deutschen Sprache (Grimm, kooptiert)
• Professur für Philosophie (Fuhrmann, kooptiert)
• Professur für Spracherwerb (Schulz, kooptiert)

Hier kommen Sie zur Seite der Geschäftsführung.

Das in Frankfurt am Fachbereich 10 (Neuere Philologien) angesiedelte Institut für Linguistik kann besondere Expertise in den Bereichen Sprachstruktur (Syntax und Phonologie), Bedeutung (Semantik und Pragmatik), Psycholinguistik (Spracherwerb, Sprachverarbeitung) und historische Linguistik vorweisen – diese Bereiche werden von international bekannten Forscherpersönlichkeiten vertreten.

Darüber hinaus bestehen enge Kontakte und über einzelne Projekte hinausgehende Kooperationen mit den Sprachwissenschaftlern in den Einzelphilologien am Fachbereich (Anglistik und Romanistik), mit der Philosophie (Fachbereich 8), und dem Institut für empirische Sprachwissenschaft am Fachbereich 9 (Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaften).

Das Potenzial der Frankfurter Linguistik liegt vor allem im Bereich der linguistischen Grundlagenforschung. Die rege Forschungstätigkeit wird unter anderem in der DFG-Forschergruppe Relativsätze gebündelt.

Das Institut für Linguistik betreut die Studiengänge BA- und MA-Linguistik, und ist für die linguistische Ausbildung im BA-Germanistik und in den Lehramtsstudiengängen (Fach Deutsch) zuständig.

We are happy to announce a talk by Jonas Grünke in the Phonology Colloquium.

Room: IG 4.301

Date: Wednesday July 16th

Time: 16-18 ct

Title: When intonation meets intonation: Evidence from Catalan-Spanish bilingualism and other contact settings

Abstract: 

Language contact often leads to mutual influence, with prosody frequently said to be particularly susceptible to such effects. However, detailed studies on prosodic transfer remain relatively scarce. In this talk, I examine intonational influence between Catalan and Spanish, showing how both languages shape each other prosodically in bilingual speakers. I argue that current patterns of variation can only be understood when taking into account language dominance in these speakers’ repertoires. In addition to this case study, I will discuss further examples of prosodic contact effects in minority and heritage languages (e.g., Judeo-Spanish) as well as in third language acquisition (L3 French), aiming to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of prosody in multilingual settings.

We are happy to announce two talks in the Semantics Colloquium: one by Kurt Erbach (Frankfurt/Saarbrücken), and another by Carolin Reinert (Frankfurt) and Carla Spellerberg (Amherst).

The talks will take place on campus in IG 4.301.
If you wish to participate virtually via Zoom, please contact Lennart Fritzsche for the link. 

Date: July 17, 2025

Time: 4 pm – 7 pm c.t.

Kurt Erbach (Frankfurt/Saarbrücken)

Title: Singular gestures and plural individuals

Abstract: 
As it stands, gesture semantics (e.g. Ebert 2024, i.a.) assumes a similarity predicate between an utterance and a co-speech gesture—e.g. if a round shape is gestured while simultaneously uttering window, then the similarity predicate is interpreted as the window being similar to the gesture—i.e. that both are round, and the roundness is not-at-issue content. What has not yet been systematically examined is the use of singular co-speech gestures with plural individuals, namely what interpretations the similarity predicate might give rise to in such an utterance, for example whether collective or distributive predication is acceptable in such a context. Because co-speech gestures are assumed to introduce not-at-issue content, we cannot rule out the possibility of a distributive reading even if the gestured individual is atomic. Therefore, a battery of tests is necessary to understand the contribution of meaning in such contexts.

Carolin Reinert (Frankfurt) and Carla Spellerberg (Amherst)

Title: Understanding non-default readings of adjective noun constructions

Abstract: 
In this talk, we would like to discuss non-default readings of adjective noun constructions involving skillful type adjectives. Certain AN constructions have a default interpretation; for instance the default interpretation of skillful teacher can be paraphrased as ‚teacher that is skillful at teaching‘. However, in a context where a teacher is juggling on a a stage during a school festival, someone who utters Wow, this is a skillful teacher! does not refer to the teacher’s teaching skills, but to his juggling skills. While the fact that such contextual interpretations of these AN constructions emerge is not new (Beesley 1983), via corpus research we observed that there seems to be a more fine-grained pattern. Specifically, what we observe is that some of the contextually emerging relevant properties are closer connected to the noun than in the teacher – juggling example above. For instance, a skillful bartender might be good at connecting people in the bar. We suggest that this can be captured with insights from psychology (Prasada & Dillingham 2006, 2009; Prasada et al. 2013), where so-called k-properties are distinguished from t-properties. We assume that the former are closer connected to the noun than the latter, which however are closer connected to the noun than purely contextually provided properties. We expect these differences to be reflected in the RTs of the respective AN constructions. In the talk, we would like to discuss the experiment design we developed to test this prediction. Feedback is very welcome.

We are happy to announce a talk by Stephanie Solt (ZAS) in the Semantics Colloquium.

The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301.
If you wish to participate virtually via Zoom, please contact Lennart Fritzsche for the link. 

Date: July 10, 2025

Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t.

Title: Three classes of polarity (in)sensitive degree modifiers (joint work with Andreea Nicolae)

Abstract: 
Among degree modifiers that compose with relative gradable adjectives, we observe three patterns of polarity sensitivity. Modifiers such as fairly and pretty are positive polarity items; those such as (all) that are negative polarity items; and those such as very are acceptable in both positive and negative contexts.

(1)  Aliona is / *isn’t fairly tall.
(2)  Bona *isn’t / is (all) that tall.
(3)  Clea is / isn’t fairly tall.

These patterns can be observed in a range of typologically related and unrelated languages.

Items such as fairly and (all) that can be classified as attenuating polarity items (Israel 1996), a broad class that is not well accounted for by leading semantic theories of polarity sensitivity (e.g. Chierchia 2013). We demonstrate that their behavior can nonetheless be captured in an alternative-based semantic framework, by supplementing strength-based competition with a second mechanism, namely simplicity-based competition.

Our central claim is that degree modifiers are blocked when they fail to make a non-trivial semantic contribution relative to the simpler unmodified form (e.g. Dora is tall).  We demonstrate that this approach can account for the three patterns exemplified in (1)-(3), and discuss how it might be extended to other classes of degree modifiers, as well as some open questions and puzzles that remain.

We are very happy to announce two talks by Jochen Zeller from the University of Kwa Zulu Natal

The first talk will be held in the Syntax Colloquium on Monday, July 14th, 4-6 p.m., room IG 4.301. The title of this talk is: „Linear order affects agreement with conjoined noun phrases: experimental evidence from isiZulu“.

Abstract: 

„In this talk I discuss different aspects of negation in the Bantu language isiZulu (Nguni; Guthrie code S42), which is the home language of almost  a quarter of South Africans (Census 2022). The talk begins with a brief overview of negation strategies in Bantu languages more generally, and in isiZulu specifically. I then discuss three different constructions that can be used in isiZulu to negate a transitive sentence. In the unmarked strategy, an object marker is attached to the negated verb that agrees in noun class with the object. When the object marker is omitted, the object (or the VP) is contrastively focused. In the third strategy, the initial vowel of the object (the so-called augment) is dropped, and the augmentless ([-A]) object is interpreted as an NPI. I explain how these three strategies were analysed in my previous research (Zeller 2021), and then zoom in on the properties of [-A]-nominals. Based on analyses that formulate the licensing conditions for [-A]-nominals in terms of negative concord (Carstens & Mletshe 2016; Carstens 2025) or structural case (Halpert 2015; Pietraszko 2021), I outline a proposal for a possible analysis of [-A]-nominals in isiZulu as property type arguments, which is inspired by ideas put forward in Partee & Borschev (2004) in their analysis of the Genitive of Negation in Russian.

After the talk on *Monday*, there will be dinner with Jochen, which will take place at Stalburg (https://stalburg-frankfurt.de/) at 6:30 p.m. If you would like to join, please sign up until Wednesday, July 9th, under the following link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YHY_mVjfRpBStpUeElk_Q6ST0ajIAFGtv-hjbOclw5I/edit?usp=sharing<

The second talk will be held in the SFB Colloquium on Tuesday, July 15th 2-4 p.m. in room NG 731. The title of this talk is: „Negation in isiZulu and its relation to focus and case“. 

Abstract: 
„Patterns of agreement with coordinate structures whose conjuncts have different feature specifications have been shown to depend on whether the agreement controller follows or precedes the target of agreement (see Corbett 1983 and subsequent work). In this talk I report the results of four elicited production experiments conducted with speakers of the Bantu language isiZulu (Nguni; S42), in which we examined agreement with  pre- and postverbal conjoined subjects and objects. Our study finds that in isiZulu, closest conjunct agreement is a productive strategy: with conjoined NPs that appear in preverbal position, agreement with the noun class features of the last conjunct is common, while conjoined NPs  in postverbal position predominantly licence first conjunct agreement. Crucially, with respect to closest conjunct agreement, conjoined  subjects and conjoined objects in isiZulu pattern alike. We show that this result provides evidence in favor of the distributed agreement  model proposed in earlier work on conjunct agreement (Bhatt & Walkow 2013; MaruÅ¡ič et al. 2015), which allows for agreement to be partially established at PF, based on the linear relation between the agreement controller and the target„

We are happy to announce a talk by Nico Löffler (Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium.

The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301.
If you wish to participate virtually via Zoom, please contact Lennart Fritzsche for the link. 

Date: July 3, 2025

Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t.

Title: The Meaning of the Russian Instrumental Case

Abstract: 
The instrumental case is probably the hardest case of the Russian language to be analysed semantically. Up to approximately 20 distinct uses have been assigned to it. Among them are the agent in passive constructions, a tool used in an action, a timeframe, and a property of an individual. It is this great variation in uses that makes it hard to give a concise formal analysis of the Russian instrumental.
In my Bachelor’s thesis, I subsume the uses of the Russian instrumental under two distinct semantic classes and provide a syntactic and semantic analysis of each class. To achieve this, I preclude semantically deviant uses, namely internal arguments, frame-setting adjuncts, and two particular uses with special constraints on usage. Some uses turn out to be purely structural, but the remaining uses are associated with one of two classes. In the first class, the nominal phrase in the instrumental case expresses a causal meaning. In the second class, the instrumental expresses a secondary predication over another subject or object referent.