Institut für Linguistik

Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

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Welcome

Welcome to the Institute of Linguistics! On this website you can find all the important information about the institute.

Best student presentation of Speech-Prosody 2024 is from Frankfurt

Employee and doctoral student Anna Preßler wins the award for the best student presentation at this year’s Speech-Prosody Conference.

Orientation event for BA Linguistics

The orientation event for first-semester students in the BA Linguistics program will take place on October 14, 2024 from 3 p.m. in room IG 454.

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Prizes for International German Studies awarded to Ermenegildo Bidese

Ermenegildo Bidese (University of Trento) completed his habilitation in the Department of Modern Philology in Frankfurt in 2021. In 2024 he received the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Prizes for International German Studies from the DAAD.

Summer schools Linguistics 2024

There are two relevant summer schools for students:

  1. DGfS Summer school on “Form Meaning Mismatches in Spoken and Visual Communication” in Göttingen (August 12-23, 2024):
    https://dgfssummer2024.blog/
    Participation fee: 50 € (Registration deadline: May 10, 2024!)
  2. Computer linguistics fall school 2024 (Python course, NLP, Argument Mining, Visual Analytics) in Passau (September 16-27, 2024):
    https://cl-fallschool-2024.github.io/
    Participation fee: 100 € (with registration until Augst 31, 2024)

End of Seminars = Start of Term Papers

With the conclusion of the lecture period, the work on the term papers begins. We kindly request all students writing term papers or theses in linguistics to follow our guidelines.

We celebrate Katharina Hartmann’s 60th birthday

During the birthday workshop “Syntax in Focus – A workshop in honour of Katharina Hartmann’s 60th birthday” we presented the festschrift in honour of Katharina on January 12, 2024: “To the left, to the right, and much in between“. It can be downloaded for free as an e-book (PDF) here.

We congratulate the Institute of Linguistics on the newly approved special research area NegLaB

From April 2024, the new DFG special research area “Negation in Language and Beyond” (SFB 1629 NegLaB) will start at Goethe University. The Institute of Linguistics is significantly involved in numerous projects at the SFB.

MA student Farbod Eslami Khouzani receives this year’s DAAD Prize

The MA linguistics student Farbod Eslami Khouzani (picture, middle) received this year’s DAAD Prize for international students on October 5th, 2023. His outstanding academic achievements as well as his social commitment were recognized. We congratulate him! More information

Prof. Katharina Hartmann and Prof. Frank Kügler nominated for the best doctoral supervision

The Goethe Research Academy for Early Career Researchers (GRADE) awards a prize every year for the best doctoral supervision. This year, two of the professors from linguistics have been nominated: Prof. Frank Kügler and Prof. Katharina Hartmann. More information

Apply now for the BA Linguistics until August 31, 2023
You can find information and links under: Freshmen/Beginners

Information for students

Studies

The Department of Linguistics at Goethe University Frankfurt offers in collaboration with the Department of English and American Studies, the Department of Psycholinguistics and the Teaching of German, and the Department of Romance Literatures and Languages two linguistic programs, a BA Linguistik taught in German and an  MA Linguistics taught in English. In addition, the Department takes part in the BA Germanistik and in the Teacher Education Program.

Further information:

Research

​Overview about the research at the institute

  

 

The Institute of Linguistics, which is based in the Faculty of  Modern Languages (FB 10), has special expertise in the fields of language structure (syntax and phonology), semantics and pragmatics, psycholinguistics (language acquisition, language processing), and historical linguistics, and represents known researchers. In addition, there are close contacts and cooperation with the linguists in the Institutes of English and Romance Studies, with philosophy (Faculty of Philosophy and History, FB 08), and the Institute for Empirical Linguistics (Faculty ofLinguistics and Cultural Studies, FB 09).

Besides the Institute of Linguistics, there is also research and teaching in linguistics in other institutes. More details can be found here:

The potential of the Frankfurt linguistics is especially in the realm of foundational research in linguistics. The active research is bundled in various projects.

Talk by Paul Koenig (Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium

We are happy to announce a talk by Paul Koenig (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: October 28, 2024

Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t.

Title: Scale theory in adjective semantics

Abstract:
Gradable adjectives cause difficulties in the analysis of their semantic and logical form due to different phenomena such as references to comparative classes, dimensional references, units of measurement, factor phrases and norm references. How the constants of the semantic form relevant for graduation are represented in the logical form, taking into account the factors mentioned, is part of the work of Bierwisch (1987), on which the approaches in this paper are based. The main objective is to use a new definition of directed intervals to specify the definitions given in Bierwisch 1987, which are intended to provide a mathematical/logical framework for the representation of the logical form, and to close problems that arise and gaps in the underlying scale theory. Directional intervals are an extension of the classic interval with a directional component. The idea is that an interval differs in whether the direction is specified, for example, from 5 to 10 or from 10 to 5. This distinguishes [5;10] from [10;5], whereby both directed intervals still contain the set of all real numbers between 5 and 10 (inclusive). With these intervals and the new definitions of e.g. combination and multiplication of directed intervals, some definitions relevant for graduation, which were only vaguely specified by Bierwisch (1987), can be made more precise. In addition, antonym pairs and sentences with units of measurement can be better represented using directed intervals.

Talks by Sebastian Walter (Frankfurt) and Lennart Fritzsche (Frankfurt)

We are happy to announce a single-authored talk by Sebastian Walter (Frankfurt) and a talk by him and Lennart Fritzsche (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: November 21, 2024

Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t.

 

Talk 1: Sebastian Walter (Frankfurt) 

Title:
Indirect discourse as mixed quotation: Insights from shifted face emoji
(joint work with Stefan Hinterwimmer)

Abstract:
Indirect discourse (ID) has been claimed to prohibit shifted interpretations of face emoji (Grosz et al. 2023). However, in this talk evidence is presented that face emoji can receive a shifted interpretation in ID utterances. Specifically, it will be shown that they can receive an interpretation from the perspective of the matrix subject, thus adding ID to the list of environments where the interpretation of face emoji is not strongly anchored to the author (cf. Grosz et al., 2021). A similar behavior has been attested for certain deictic expressions (Plank, 1986; Anderson, 2019) as well as self-pointing gestures (Ebert & Hinterwimmer, 2022; Walter, 2024). Drawing on a suggestion by Ebert & Hinterwimmer (2022), these findings are interpreted as evidence of mixed quotation being available in ID. Building on an earlier analysis extending Davidson’s (2015) demonstrational account of quotation to ID (Walter, to appear), we claim that ID—roughly speaking—makes two meaning contributions: i) an at-issue contribution that there exists a reported speech event, its content being the same as the proposition embedded under the attitude verb in the ID utterance and ii) a not-at-issue contribution that the demonstration of this speech event made by the ID utterance is similar to the form of a subevent of the reported speech event, thereby enforcing that only parts of the reported speech event are quoted.

 

Talk 2: Lennart Fritzsche (Frankfurt) & Sebastian Walter (Frankfurt)

Title:
Nodding yes or doch? On the interpretation of gestural response elements

Abstract:
In response to negative antecedents, German ja (‘yes’) and nein (‘no’) can be used interchangeably. Both can be used to affirm negative antecedents, but never to reject them. A rejection of negative antecedents is only felicitous with the specialized particle doch, cf. (1).

(1)
A: Sind meine Schuhe nicht in deinem Kleiderschrank? (‘Are my shoes not in your closet?’)
B: (i) Ja. (= They aren’t.)
    (ii) Nein. (= They aren’t.)
   (iii) Doch. (= They are.)

It has been standardly assumed that–in cases such as responding to polar questions–, standalone (pro-speech) headnods and headshakes can be used interchangeably with ‘yes’ and ‘no’, respectively (e.g., Kendon, 2002; Fusaro et al., 2012; Lücking and Ginzburg, 2021).

As it stands, however, there is only a vague empirical picture of the distribution of standalone head gestures used as response elements. While it is fairly easy to identify nodding with ‘yes’ and shaking with ‘no’ in positive contexts, the situation is more complex in negative contexts (e.g., Loos and Repp, 2024, for German).

We present data from an experimental forced-choice study investigating the interpretation of headnods and headshakes used as response elements in comparison to German ja and nein. Our findings suggest that while both headnods and headshakes can be used to affirm negative antecedents (just like ja and nein), headnods, by themselves, can also be used to reject negative antecedents, akin to doch. Thus, a more complete picture of German response tokens in negative contexts incorporates the interchangeability of ja, nein and headshake, while headnods are at least to some extent ambiguous.

Talk by Alexandrine Dunlap (GU/Florida) in the Syntax Colloquium

We are happy to announce a talk by Alexandrine Dunlap (GU/Florida) in the Syntax Colloquium.

The talks will take place in person. Room IG 4.301

Date: November 18, 2024

Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct

Title: “Operator Agreement in Sentential Negation”

Abstract:

In this talk I will put forward possible analyses that can account for Gweno’s unique agreeing negation. In Gweno main clause sentential negation, a post-verbal negation particle is inflected for the phi features of the subject. Additionally, Gweno uses an alternate negation strategy for certain clause types, specifically relative clauses and conditionals which encode negation with a post-initial prefix. Given the strict relationship between the negation particle and subject inflection on the verb, I explore the possibility of movement of the entire TP into the specifier of NegP and the role an operator may play in facilitating this pattern.

Talk by Samuel O. Acheampong and Anke Himmelreich (GU) in the Syntax Colloquium

We are happy to announce a talk by Samuel O. Acheampong and Anke Himmelreich (GU) in the Syntax Colloquium.

The talks will take place in person. Room IG 4.301

Date: November 11, 2024

Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct

Title: “On the interaction between coordination and focus marking: The case of Mabia languages”

Abstract:

In this talk we present data from two Mabia languages, Likpakpaanl and Dagbani, that show that the marker for clausal coordination is identical to the ex-situ focus marker. Further, in a clausal coordination construction, focus marking is impossible in the second conjunct. We discuss the idea that the focus construction and the clausal coordination construction are structurally identical in the sense that the marker links two elements of different syntactic categories and we show how this can derive the empirical observations about clausal coordination in the Mabia languages.

Talk by Cornelia Ebert (Frankfurt) and Markus Steinbach (Göttingen) in the Semantics Colloquium

We are happy to announce a talk by Cornelia Ebert (Frankfurt) and Markus Steinbach (Göttingen) 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: November 7, 2024

Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t.

Title: The semantics of semi-conventionalized lexical depictions in spoken and sign languages

Abstract:
Typological research has shown that many unrelated spoken languages have ideophones such as English helter-skelter or German plitsch-platsch. Ideophones form a special class of words which are used in specific registers (often vivid narrative contexts) and can be defined as “an open lexical class of marked words that depict sensory imagery” (Dingemanse 2019). They have been argued to be depictive items which establish an iconic relationship of the form of an ideophone (including the utterance of it) and its meaning, which lies in the domain of sensory imagery encoding information about movement, sound, sentiment or mental state. In addition, ideophones typically contribute non-at-issue information (similar to co-speech gestures). Some ideophones are mixed items that combine at-issue with non-at-issue information (Dingemanse & Akita 2017; Dingemanse 2012, 2019; Ćwiek 2022; Barnes et al. 2022; Barnes & Ebert 2023, Barnes 2024).

In this presentation, we take a cross-linguistic and a cross-modal perspective and compare the semantic properties of ideophones in spoken languages with similar expressions in sign languages, so-called idiomatic signs. We show that ideophones and idiomatic signs semantically consist of a conventionalized at-issue meaning part and a gestural non-at-issue part, whose meaning can vary from utterance situation to utterance situation and is dependent on how the ideophone or idiomatic sign is produced in the given situation. Our semantic analysis builds on the formal gesture semantics account of Ebert et al. (2020) (based on Anderbois et al. 2015 and Davidson 2015) as well as Barnes & Ebert’s (2023) and Barnes (2024) analysis developed for mixed ideophones. We thus provide a modality-independent analysis of the semantics of this special class of lexical expressions.