Research – TYP^EX Lab
Our group conducts research on questions of typology and language comparison and examines less researched non-Indo-European languages, including the Mayan and Chibchan languages of Central America. Experimental and corpus linguistic methods form the essential basis of the knowledge gained. The aim is to reduce the observed variation between languages to more abstract principles that can be traced back to the cognitive foundations of the language system.
Typology and Documentation of Languages of Meso- and Central America
The indigenous languages of Central America are characterised by a number of typologically distinctive features. In various projects, we work on topics such as word order, ergativity, argument alternations, information structure, event structure and causativity.
Register variation
Competent speakers can adapt their linguistic behaviour to the respective situation at every level. What are the properties of this type of linguistic knowledge called register knowledge?
Theory and Typology of Argument Structure
Experiencers and predicates that select experiencers form a central area of theoretical linguistics, since they trigger effects that lie outside the regular behaviour of canonical (non-experiential) structures. How do psych verbs behave crosslinguistically in their syntax, semantics and pragmatics?
Prominence of experiencers in language comparison
Language diversity in Urban Areas
Speakers of different languages live in the urban area of Berlin. How can we support them in preserving their languages and promote contacts between language communities in Berlin and academics?
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[with S. Skopeteas (P.I.; University of Potsdam), E. Sella (University of Athens), A. Markopoulos (University of Athens)] Funding: Latsis Foundation The "Urum documentation project" emerged from a collaboration between the Universities of Athens, Bielefeld, Bremen and Potsdam and was funded by the Latsis foundation (January 2010 - February 2011). The goal is to provide the scientific community and a wider audience with a basic documentation (words, phrases, texts, manuscripts) of the language, which will be made available online for interested researchers and the language community itself. 1/2010 – 1/2011
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Typologie der Argumentrealisierung Funding: Zentrale Forschungsförderung U. Bremen 11/2009 – 03/2011
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Der Einfluss ontologischer Faktoren auf sprachliche Strukturen Funding: Zentrale Forschungsförderung U. Bremen 11/2006 – 10/2009
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Information structure in Modern Greek [with G. Markopoulos (University of Athens) and S. Skopeteas (University of Potsdam)] Funding: Griechisches Erziehungsministerium (Grant No. 70/4/8841) 2006 – 2007 |