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.
PhD Projects in the first cohort
- • Verbal agreement in and across sign languages
- PhD student: Gautam Ottur
- Supervisors: Markus Steinbach, Hedde Zeijlstra
- Supervisors: Markus Steinbach, Hedde Zeijlstra
- • From discourse to syntax
- PhD student: Andrea Matticchio
- Supervisors: Marco Coniglio, Stavros Skopeteas
- Supervisors: Marco Coniglio, Stavros Skopeteas
- • Word-form and word-meaning mismatches in language acquisition
- PhD student: Judith Kalinowski
- Supervisors: Nivedita Mani, Thomas Weskott
- Supervisors: Nivedita Mani, Thomas Weskott
- • Form-meaning mismatches in number and gender
- PhD student: Feras Saeed
- Supervisors: Hedde Zeijlstra, Sascha Alexeyenko, Caroline Sporleder
- Supervisors: Hedde Zeijlstra, Sascha Alexeyenko, Caroline Sporleder
- • Diachrony of split NP / DP constructions
- PhD student: Lieke Hendriks
- Supervisors: Marco Coniglio, Goetz Keydana
- Supervisors: Marco Coniglio, Goetz Keydana
- • Scrambling and scalar implicatures
- PhD student: Maik Thalmann
- Supervisors: Clemens Steiner-Mayr, Thomas Weskott
- Supervisors: Clemens Steiner-Mayr, Thomas Weskott
- • Imperatives and imperative speech acts across modalities
- PhD student: Marianthi Koraka
- Supervisors: Nivedita Mani, Markus Steinbach
- Supervisors: Nivedita Mani, Markus Steinbach
- • Null objects
- PhD student: Prudence de Pontbriand
- Supervisors: Goetz Keydana, Guido Mensching
- Supervisors: Goetz Keydana, Guido Mensching
- • Wh-less degree questions
- PhD student: Karen Hovind
- Supervisors: Uwe Junghanns, Stavros Skopeteas
- Supervisors: Uwe Junghanns, Stavros Skopeteas
- • Particles with question and disjunction uses
- PhD student: Zhao Zeqi
- Supervisors: Uwe Junghanns, Clemens Steiner-Mayr
- Supervisors: Uwe Junghanns, Clemens Steiner-Mayr
- • Presentational particles
- PhD student: Katja Friedewald
- Supervisors: Anke Holler, Guido Mensching
- Supervisors: Anke Holler, Guido Mensching
- • Identifying context-dependent meaning components of figurative expressions
- PhD student: Irene Pagliai
- Supervisors: Anke Holler, Caroline Sporleder
- Supervisors: Anke Holler, Caroline Sporleder