Research Area
The Research Area Semantics and Pragmatics is concerned with linguistic meaning and the connection between language and non-linguistic thinking. The results of our foundational research can be applied in various fields: Information technology, comprehensibility optimisation (medical guidelines or textbooks), language diagnostics.
By combining small units such as single words or parts of words to larger units such as sentences, dialogues, and texts, complex thoughts can be expressed. Their meaning is mainly derived compositionally from the meaning of the parts and the way they are assembled (semantics). Non-verbal signals such as emphasis, gestures and context also have an influence on meaning (pragmatics).
Humboldt Research Fellowship
(ABI)
The project aims to study the acquisition of semantics and pragmatics, with a particular focus on the language Bengali and the derivation of implicatures. Over the course of the project, the empirical scope will expand to other relevant phenomena and possibly language(s), aiming to explore the broader developmental landscape of logical expressions across South Asian languages.
DFG ANR project
(BooLL)
Research on the impact of language on arithmetic ability and early numerical learning has been growing significantly over the last decades. But when we turn to other areas of mathematical cognition, such as those involving basic logical concepts that can be expressed using everyday language, research on the impact of language is still lacking. The BooLL project seeks to fill this gap and brings novel methodology and evidence to bear on the issue of whether logical abilities are dependent on (native) language.
Humboldt Research Fellowship
(ESAFY)
This research investigates focus constructions in Yorùbá within the framework of Ex-Situ Focus Semantics.
EU Horizon 2020 project
(LeibnizDream)
This project develops a new linguistic theory to explain language and its acquisition. Our central hypothesis is that language radically compresses thought structures to sound or sign. We assume that thought is mapped to language by only realizing some pieces of conceptual representations.
Funded by Leibniz-Wettbewerb
(LMBayes)
The project addresses the mathematical modelling of logical conclusions and inferences as an essential part of our use of language.
Humboldt Research Fellowship
(MERLIN)
The aim of the project is to explore the role of structured part-whole configurations in natural language in order to provide novel evidence for a mereotopological approach to nominal and verbal semantics.
DFG project
(PALLM)
Decades of interdisciplinary research on the meanings of propositional attitude verbs like “believe” and “want” have furnished deep insights into how humans use language to describe mental states. This project will be the first to study how large language models (LLMs) use such attitudes, comparing LLMs to both humans and each other.
Humboldt Research Fellowship
(PoPPIn)
Determining the projection of plurality inferences promises interesting insights into the nature of semantic projection and pragmatic competition. This project relies on cutting edge theoretical analyses and experimental techniques to resolve key questions on inference projection.
Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship
(ProVo)
The world’s languages have a number of expressions that are apparently sensitive to goodness-of-example. This project aims to better understand conceptual representation by studying these expressions.
Humboldt Research Fellowship
(QuiD)
The main objective of QuiD is to extend our understanding of the semantics-pragmatics interface to interrogative utterances. QuiD proposes that competition-based models of the interface can be recast in terms of discourse continuations.
DFG project
(CRC 1412-Register A05)
The subproject in the CRC 1412 „Register: Language-Users’ Knowledge of Situational-Functional Variation" investigates situationally and functionally driven intra-individual variation involving alternatives that differ in their core logical or truth-conditional content.
DFG project
(CRC 1412-Register B06)
The subproject in the CRC 1412 „Register: Language-Users’ Knowledge of Situational-Functional Variation" investigates and models the interaction between language change and register knowledge: how is change driven, in which direction, and is it propelled from above (by higher registers) or below (by lower registers)?