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.

Welcome to the Institute of Linguistics!

A warm welcome to our new students joining the B.A. Linguistik and M.A. Linguistics programs in the winter semester 2026/27!

To kick off the semester, we held a welcome event in an open-space format on October 9. Students could explore different areas of their studies at individual stands, ask questions, and get to know faculty and fellow students.

We wish everyone a great start to their studies and look forward to the semester together!

ViCom at the Frankfurt Science Festival

On 19 September, ViCom will be at the Frankfurt Science Festival at the Roßmarkt with two interactive stations on visual and multimodal communication. Read more.

The Linguistic Owl-Stars at the Goethe Run

Seven members of the Institute of Linguistics took part in this year’s Goethe Run as the Linguistic Owl-Stars. Read more.

Proceedings der Sinn und Bedeutung (SuB) 30

We are delighted to announce that the Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung (SuB) 30, which took place in Frankfurt in September 2025, have now been published!

The volume, featuring the wonderful contributions presented at SuB30, is available here.

The cover was designed by Daniel Gutzmann and features a photograph by Alex Lowles (@alexlowlesphotography).

“Questions? Answers! And more” Workshop

We are happy to announce a student workshop with four talks and five posters, as part of the MA seminar „Questions and Answers“ by Prof. Katharina Hartmann. You can find the program here.

Workshop title: Questions? Answers! And more
Date: Monday, 06th July 2026
Time: 14:00h – 17:35h (s. t.)
Room: IG 4.301 (linguistics room)

Corinna Langer and Anna Pressler successfully defend their dissertations

On June 26, 2026, two dissertation defenses were successfully held in the Phonology group.

Corinna Langer defended her thesis entitled Focus and Prosody in Hungarian – investigating syntactically unmarked focus in the morning and Anna Pressler defended her thesis on Prosodic factors at the phrase level: the positioning of French adjectives in the afternoon.

We warmly congratulate both for their achievement! Read more.

 

Sebastian Walter successfully defends his dissertation 

On June 8, 2026, Sebastian Walter successfully defended his dissertation titled Interactions of perspective-taking in gesture and speech. We warmly congratulate him on this achievement! Read more.

 

Proceedings of GLOW 47

We are pleased to announce that the proceedings of GLOW 47, which took place in Frankfurt in March 2025, have been published. The current issue can be found here.

Dissertation by Sebastian Bredemann Published

We are pleased to announce that the dissertation titled “The role of phonology at spell-out” by Sebastian Bredemann has been published via the University Library Frankfurt (UB Frankfurt):
https://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/96769

We warmly congratulate him on the successful completion of his PhD!

 

Max Berthold successfully defends his dissertation
On March 4, 2026, Max Berthold successfully defended his dissertation titled Temporality in the Nominal Domain: Tense and Aspect. We warmly congratulate him on this achievement! Read more. 
 

Potential Field Multimodal Communication

In January 2026, the Potential Field Multimodal Communication (speakers: Cornelia Ebert, Frank Kügler) has started at Goethe University Frankfurt. The research focus aims to bring together scholars from linguistics, literary and cultural studies, theatre and performance studies, film and media studies, psychology, neurocognition, musicology, and computer science.

New DFG Collaboartive Research Centre

In October 2025, the new DFG Collaborative Research Centre Common Ground (CRC 1718) starts at the University of Tübingen. We are delighted that the Institute of Linguistics will be participating with the project Multimodality, Iconicity, and Common Ground: On the Status of Spoken Language and Gesture. (PIs: Kathryn Barnes, Cornelia Ebert & Britta Stolterfoht).

 

Sinn und Bedeutung 30 (SuB30) 2025 in Frankfurt

The 30th edition of Sinn und Bedeutung (SuB30) will take place at Goethe University Frankfurt from September 23–27, 2025, organized by the Semantics professorship.

The conference will feature:

For more information please visit https://vicom.info/sub30/. 

Best student presentation of MMSYM 2024 is from Frankfurt

Employee and doctoral student Alina Gregori as well as Vera Wolfrum (Uni Würzburg) win the award for the best student presentation at this year’s MMSYM.

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.

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.

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

Information for freshman/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 Veneeta Dayal (Yale) in the Semantics Colloquium

We are happy to announce a talk by Veneeta Dayal (Yale) in the Semantics Colloquium.

The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. 

Date: November 5, 2026

Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t.

Title: Demonstrative to Definite: What Changes and What Stays the Same

Abstract: I posit that a demonstrative has two parts to its meaning, an indexical part and a contrastive part. The first demarcates a possibly proper sub-domain in the context of evaluation within which a unique referent must be established. It must also be possible for the referent to be contrasted with another entity in the context of evaluation or outside it, the property of anti-uniqueness. A definite lacks anti-uniqueness, and it also lacks indexicality, simply requiring its referent to be unique in the context of evaluation.

I show how this distinction accounts for certain well-known facts. The definite article is compatible with proper names in many languages. A proper name, suitably adjusted for type, satisfies the uniqueness requirements of the definite. Languages make a parametric choice about projecting a D. There is no cross-linguistic variation with respect to demonstratives – proper names are uniformly unacceptable. Strikingly, their unacceptability can be ameliorated under exclamatives – a fact that I suggest can only be explained with reference to the property of anti-uniqueness.

Finally, I consider cases where demonstratives require the support of a full DP to piggy-back on and argue that such cases crucially require distinguishing between indexicality and anti-uniqueness.

Against this background, I look at the case of strong vs. weak definite articles. Since Schwarz (2009), cross-linguistic studies have embraced the distinction between a strong familiarity-based definite and a weak uniqueness-based definite. But so far only Fering and German have been shown to have two distinct lexical forms of definite articles. What has actually been attested is a division of labor between either one definite determiner and a demonstrative (English), or a bare noun and a demonstrative (Mandarin). This raises the question of where exactly to place the strong-weak articles of the German-Fering kind in the typology of demonstratives and definites. I explore the possibility that the strong definite article presents an intermediate stage in the development path from the demonstrative to the weak definite.

Talk by Giuliano Armenante (Potsdam) in the Semantics Colloquium

We are happy to announce a talk by Giuliano Armenante (Potsdam) in the Semantics Colloquium.

The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. 

Zoom link: https://uni-frankfurt.zoom-x.de/j/62660316332?pwd=94KnkxFireEQFCWBGpi35ZwrClwoLa.1 

Date: October 29, 2026

Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t.

Title: There is more than one way to X-mark: The lesson from West Africa

Abstract: Conditionals expressing remote possibilities are often morphologically distinguished from those expressing open possibilities through specialized “X-marking” morphology (von Fintel & Iatridou 2023). This morphology includes both repurposed fake past forms (as in English) and dedicated counterfactual markers (e.g. Hungarian -nA) (Iatridou 2000). Competing modal (Mackay 2019; Schulz 2014) and temporal analyses (Arregui 2009; Ippolito 2013) have been proposed for English fake past. Recent cross-linguistic work, however, reveals a more nuanced picture, suggesting that temporal and modal contributions to X-marking can be dissociated (M. Kaufmann & Todorović 2024; S. Kaufmann 2023; Mizuno 2023).

In this talk, I contribute to this debate by presenting novel data from three Kwa languages (Niger-Congo): one tensed language, Akan, and two tenseless languages, Ga and Ewe, all of which employ dedicated X-marking. I show that (i) dedicated X-marking contributes modal expansion of the conditional’s domain of quantification in all three languages (cf. S. Kaufmann 2023; Stalnaker 1975; von Fintel & Iatridou 2023); (ii) in Akan, past tense morphology shifts either the evaluation time or the reference time of the conditional, thereby retaining its temporal contribution; and (iii) in Ga and Ewe, X-marked conditionals exhibit greater, though distinct, degrees of semantic variation.

Building on these findings, I argue that X-marking is not a uniform semantic category, but may involve modal expansion, backward temporal displacement, or both. I further show that distinguishing these contributions offers a way to reconcile recent criticisms of strictly temporal analyses (von Fintel & Iatridou 2023) with those of modal analyses of past morphology (Ippolito & Mirrazi 2026).

Talk by Morgan Moyer (Barcelona) in the Semantics Colloquium

We are happy to announce a talk by Morgan Moyer (Barcelona) in the Semantics Colloquium.

The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. 

Zoom link: https://uni-frankfurt.zoom-x.de/j/62660316332?pwd=94KnkxFireEQFCWBGpi35ZwrClwoLa.1 

Date: October 22, 2026

Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t.

Title: Meaning Beyond Truth: A Psychosemantic Approach to Affective Meaning

Abstract:
How are different kinds of linguistic meaning represented and accessed in cognition? Research in semantics and pragmatics distinguishes truth-conditional content from presuppositions, conventional implicatures, and other kinds of non-at-issue meaning. Experimental pragmatics and psycholinguistics, meanwhile, investigates how linguistic information becomes available during comprehension, how pragmatic inferences unfold over time, and how semantic features organize conceptual representations. Yet the relationship between these linguistic distinctions and the cognitive status of the content they characterize remains poorly understood.

This talk brings together two strands of experimental research to investigate this relationship. The first examines the cognitive prominence of affective valence relative to truth-conditional conceptual features. Using speeded categorization and similarity judgments, I investigate whether affective information is especially accessible and whether it plays a distinctive role in organizing conceptual representations. The second examines evaluative inferences associated with “thick” moral adjectives, such as “generous” and “egotistical”, using diagnostics of contradiction, similarity, at-issueness, and projection to characterize the relationship between evaluative and descriptive content.

I connect these research programs through the problem of linking theoretical distinctions to experimental measures. Research on pragmatic inferences highlights the assumptions involved in interpreting behavioral responses as evidence for particular kinds of meaning (Degen & Goodman 2014; Jasbi, Waldon & Degen 2019). Meanwhile, Abrusán’s (2011) account of presupposition motivates a connection between pragmatic status and the allocation of attention. Together, these approaches invite us to question whether distinctions in linguistic meaning correspond to differences in cognitive accessibility, representational organization, or how information is integrated in interpretation.

I ask whether the cognitive prominence of affective information relates to the pragmatic behavior of evaluative content, or whether accessibility, conceptual similarity, and pragmatic status constitute distinct dimensions of meaning. By bringing these questions into dialogue, I aim to develop an empirically grounded account of how linguistic meaning distinctions relate to the representations and processes through which language interfaces with cognition.

Talk by Pascal Hohmann (Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium

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

The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301. 

Date: July 16, 2026

Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t.

Title: Before what happens? NPIs and expletive negation in German bevor-clauses

Abstract:
German ‘bevor’ (‘before’) clauses are an unusual environment in which two superficially opposite, negation-related phenomena surface in one and the same syntactic frame. On the one hand, ‘bevor’-clauses license negative polarity items (NPIs) — such as ‘mit der Wimper zucken’ ‘bat an eyelid’, ‘(einen) Mucks machen’ ‘make a peep’, ‘ein Wort sagen’ ‘say a word’, or ‘je’ ‘ever’. On the other hand, they host expletive negation (EN): a ‘nicht’ that, in the right context, does not reverse the truth conditions of the clause it appears in (Krifka 2010):

(1)
Ich gehe nicht nach Hause, bevor das (nicht) fertig ist.
‘I won’t go home before that is (not) finished.’ — both variants truth-conditionally equivalent

The talk pursues a semantic question: are NPI licensing and expletive negation freely available inside ‘bevor’-clauses, or are they conditioned — and if so, by what?

The point of departure is Tahar’s (2021) typology of before-clauses, which distinguishes three uses: consecutive (a factual temporal sequence), apprehensive (preventive; the main clause aims at avoiding the before-event — a negative purpose), and frustrative (the main clause is an ‘active inaction’ motivated by the expectation that the before-event will not occur — a negative reason). The hypothesis under investigation is that the two phenomena stand in complementary distribution along this divide: NPIs surface in apprehensive (and consecutive) ‘bevor’, expletive negation only in frustrative ‘bevor’:

(2)
a. Noch bevor die Frau einen Mucks machen konnte, hielt ihr der Fremde den Mund zu. (apprehensive; NPI)
b. Kein Spieler darf zwei Elfmeter ausführen, bevor (nicht) alle anderen Mitspieler geschossen haben! (frustrative; EN)

Empirically, I test the hypothesis on web-scale corpus data (deTenTen23, 1.17B sentences; ~2.25M ‘bevor’ tokens), extracting NPI and EN candidates and classifying random samples of 100 hits each by Tahar’s diagnostics. The data support the complementary distribution: EN occurs exclusively in frustrative contexts, and NPIs are absent from frustrative ones. At the same time, a robust consecutive/apprehensive ambiguity in the NPI data indicates that the three-way typology is under-determined for German.

Theoretically, the result sharpens a puzzle for the existing accounts: if EN is licensed by matrix negation together with a semantically uniform ‘bevor’, why is it barred from consecutive ‘bevor’ even when the main clause is negated?

Talk by Chiara Marchetiello (Dublin) in a joint session of the Semantics and Syntax Colloquia

We are happy to announce a joint session of the Semantics and Syntax Colloquia, featuring a talk by Chiara Marchetiello (Dublin).

The talk will take place on campus in IG 411.
If you wish to participate virtually via Zoom, please contact Lennart Fritzsche for the link. 

Date: July 9, 2026

Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t.

Title: To be or not to be integrated: A formal account on [PDO] in Campania

Abstract:
In this talk, I discuss some initial observations on the syntactic integration of gesture found in the rich gestural inventories of the local languages spoken in Campania region (Italy). Specifically, I present two case studies on the gesture called [PALM-DOWN-OPEN-HAND-PRONE] ([PDO]). Based on new data collected from primary fieldwork I conducted in Campania, I show that [PDO] can be syntactically integrated into the grammar of the languages of Campania in two different ways. When [PDO] accompanies speech, it can be interpreted as an epistemic marker which indicates the speaker’s certainty towards the truth-value conditions of the content of the spoken utterance it accompanies. Conversely, when [PDO] is used in place of speech, it can be considered as a negative response marker like English ‘no’. Crucially, this study provides evidence in support of the Grammatical Integration Hypothesis (Colasanti 2023a,b), which hypothesis that (at least) some gestures can be integrated into the grammar as morphemes externalised at the Phonological Form (PF) in the visual-gestural modality as gesture, rather than in the auditory-spoken modality as speech.