Research

It has been a standard assumption in linguistic theory, based on Frege’s principle of compositionality (cf. Frege 1884, 1892), that the meaning of a sentence is composed on the basis of the meaning of its parts and the way these parts are structured. However, it is not really clear that there exists a transparent, bi-directional mapping between (morphosyntactic) form and (semantic/pragmatic) meaning. Many phenomena challenge the existence of such a mapping. Such challenges either exist in the form of morphosyntactic elements that do not seem to provide a semantic/pragmatic contribution, or in the form of meaning parts that lack a morphosyntactic realization. Hence, either the mapping between form and meaning (in its broadest sense) in natural language is less transparent than one might think, or morphosyntactic and/or semantic/pragmatic structures may be richer than they appear. This RTG seeks to investigate and understand what this mapping exactly amounts to.

To this end, the RTG will examine a wide range of case studies involving potential challenges for this mapping. The case studies cover a wide range of languages, and the specific questions of the projects cover all core areas of linguistics: grammatical theory (morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics), linguistic variation including sign languages, language change, language processing and language acquisition.



• Ideophones in spoken languages

PhD student: Josiah Neequaye

Supervisors: Markus Steinbach, Hedde Zeijlstra, Anke Holler


• Variation and multifunctionality in Cabo Verdean Creole

PhD student: Rebecca Arkell

Supervisors: Stavros Skopeteas, Marco Coniglio


• Probing the systematicity of early mappings

PhD student: Felicia Stich

Supervisors: Nivedita Mani, Markus Steinbach, Lisa Beinborn


• The semantics of plural morphology in selected Niger-Congo; Kwa languages

PhD student: Madeline Ladore

Supervisors: Stavros Skopeteas, Hedde Zeijlstra


• Left Branch Extraction in hyperbata

PhD student: Yasaman Sanei

Supervisors: Götz Keydana, Marco Coniglio


• Multiple Wh-questions: Ex-situ/in-situ variation in Avatime

PhD student: Adom Mac-Arthur

Supervisors: Uwe Junghanns, Thomas Weskott


• Null subjects typologically

PhD student: Rishabh Suresh

Supervisors: Marco Coniglio, Hedde Zeijlstra


• The development of clitics in Georgian

PhD student: Tekla Gabunia

Supervisors: Götz Keydana, Guido Mensching


• Intersentential clausal exceptive constructions

PhD student: Sumedha Gupta

Supervisors: Thomas Weskott, Clemens Steiner-Mayr


• Questions and conditionals

PhD student: Ateş Çalışır

Supervisors: Clemens Steiner-Mayr, Uwe Junghanns


• Functions of iconicity: A cross-modal and cross-linguistic perspective

PhD student: Marta Herget

Supervisors: Guido Mensching, Stavros Skopeteas


• Classifier constructions in sign languages

PhD student: Vanessa Tsang

Supervisors: Markus Steinbach, Anke Holler, Nina-Kristin Meister


PhD Projects in the first cohort


• Serial verb constructions in spoken and sign languages

PhD student: Gautam Ottur

Supervisors: Markus Steinbach, Hedde Zeijlstra

Defense date: tba

• Verb-Subject orders in Old Romance and the emergence of a subject position

PhD student: Andrea Matticchio

Supervisors: Stavros Skopeteas, Marco Coniglio


• How form and meaning overlap shape vocabulary development

PhD student: Judith Kalinowski

Supervisors: Nivedita Mani, Markus Steinbach

Defended on 17.06.2025


• Nominal concord in Arabic

PhD student: Feras Saeed

Supervisors: Hedde Zeijlstra, Sascha Alexeyenko

Defended on 12.08.2025


• Split Noun Phrase Topicalization in Dutch and its varieties

PhD student: Lieke Hendriks

Supervisors: Götz Keydana, Marco Coniglio

Defended on 13.06.2025


• Wh-less degree questions

PhD student: Karen Hovind

Supervisors: Uwe Junghanns, Stavros Skopeteas


• The expression of imperative speech acts in sign languages

PhD student: Marianthi Koraka

Supervisors: Markus Steinbach, Nivedita Mani


• Null objects in Late Latin and Early Romance languages

PhD student: Prudence de Pontbriand

Supervisors: Guido Mensching, Götz Keydana

Defended on 10.07.2025


• Experimental investigation of presupposition projection in German and English

PhD student: Maik Thalmann

Supervisors: Thomas Weskott, Clemens Steiner-Mayr


• Mandarin dou and its multiple semantic uses

PhD student: Zeqi Zhao

Supervisors: Clemens Steiner-Mayr, Uwe Junghanns


• Presentational Particles in Romance Languages. A diachronic syntactic study of French and Italian

PhD student: Katja Friedewald

Supervisors: Guido Mensching, Anke Holler


• Variability in idiomatic multiword expressions

PhD student: Irene Pagliai

Supervisors: Anke Holler, Caroline Sporleder

Defense date: 30.10.2025