Research

In semantics, we address the question of what linguistic expressions mean. However, we are less interested in problems like „What does liberty mean?“, “What is the difference between dog and mutt?” but rather in the meaning of so-called function words, such as besides, and, not, however, all, other, such, therefore, at all etc. and grammatical structures like cleft sentences and different types of interrogative clauses.

Here are some questions that illustrate our interests:

• Why do some indefinite pronouns like German irgendwer contain interrogative pronouns (German wer), and how is its meaning different from variants like irgendjemand?

(What about: What is the connection between indefinite pronouns like German irgendwer and the therein contained interrogative pronouns (German wer)?)

• What determines when definite articles are used in front of a human proper name in German? (die Angela or Angela)
• Does the following sentence rule out that Sigmund knows that Petra has taken the exam, if there are multiple people who took the exam?

Sigmund does not know who took the exam.

• What is the difference in meaning between the following sentences?

Anna has seen her BROTHER.

It was her BROTHER that Anna has seen.

Her BROTHER was who Anna saw.

Our most important methods are the techniques of truth-conditional semantics, comparative linguistics, logical modelling, and the lambda calculus. Our main interest is German, but we also work on other languages, including Slavic languages, Romance languages, English, Hungarian.

 

Linguistic utterances hardly ever occur in isolation. Usually, they are interpreted in textual or conversational contexts. For example, indexical expressions such as I, you, he, she change refer to different people in different contexts. More subtly, but at least as interestingly, also the intonation and prosody of sentences, ellipsis as well as the meaning of discourse particles (e.g. ja, doch) and various constructions depend on context. In pragmatics, we explore the interface between the context and the structure and semantics of linguistic utterances. We develop formal models to explicate the meanings of contextually-dependent expressions.

Some questions that we are interested in are:

• Why can we choose freely between the female and male pronoun “er” and “sie” in German in a sentence like the following:            

Dieser^masc Baum ist eine^fem Tanne. Er^masc/Sie^fem ist mindestens 20 Jahre alte.

This^masc tree is a^fem pine tree. He^masc/she^fem is at least 20 years old.

• Why can the following two sentences merge into a single one?

Max is an old friend of mine.

I met Max yesterday.

I met Max, an old friend of mine, yesterday.

• Why does only one of the following sentences presuppose that Erika is very rich?

Yesterday, Michael learned that Erika is very rich.

Yesterday, Michael said that Erika is very rich.

Our main methods are formal, mathematical discourse modelling, text analysis and corpus linguistics.

 

In text linguistics, we take a look at texts, from long narratives to a sign on a door:

Of course, we also analyze traditional texts such as newspaper articles. With the rising importance of the internet as a communication medium, we are also interested in web-native texts like blog entries, tweets, emails, chat messages. Imagery and visual content play a big role in internet communications (for example “memes”).

We are interested in complex, multimodal means of expression from semiotically diverse elements, looking into questions such as:

• What are the criteria that make something a “text”?
• How is text-structural and text-semantic connection established in prototypical and multimodal texts?
• What is communicated in texts on an implicit level?
• What are the structural and functional characteristics of narrative and argumentative texts?
• How are texts embedded into their respective situation and discourse contexts and what communicative functions do they fulfill?
• How can we interpret patterns and textual mechanisms, i.e. types of texts, as conventionalized solutions to communicative problems?
• How are traditional text types adapted to fit the Internet medium and what new text types have emerged due to these new medium possibilities?
• How does the Internet change our idea of textuality?

The courses on the topic address competences that give students the competency to approach texts analytically, from a formal linguistic perspective. This is a particularly useful skill for students training to become teachers.

 

Experimental linguistics is an empirical science, on a par for instance with experimental psychology. By observing conscious and unconscious human language behavior in the lab or in the context of web-based studies, we model processes and patterns in language processing with statistical methods.

In one experiment for example, we simulated a game to investigate how embedded questions are interpreted. In another experiment we simulated diachronic language change by teaching the experiment participants new ways to use words.

Our methods include questionnaires, eye tracking, mouse tracking, computer simulations, and statistical data analysis. We also develop experimental software and new experimental methods. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary research, as well as combining various methods, e.g. corpus linguistics and questionnaires.

Linguistics is a cognitive science. This makes it well suited to investigate cognitive phenomena from an interdisciplinary perspective. For example, we are currently looking at how suspense is created in literary texts and how linguistic structures in the text influence the reading experience. We are also interested in:

• The persusasive power of linguistic arguments
• The evolutionary benefits of early answers (i.e. answering of questions not yet asked)
• The evolutionary advantage of exaggeration and overstatements
• The evaluation of badly reasoned but accidentally true statements
• Characteristics of authors’ individualistic style
  
   

Information on our research projects can be found here.