Newsletter April 2020

This is the 142nd issue of the Newsletter published by the Department of Linguistics at the University of Konstanz. It covers informations about the plans of the members of the department in April 2020 as well as short reports about events, presentations, etc. in March 2020.

New to Konstanz

We are very happy to welcome to the department the two new professors: Bernhard Brehmer (Slavic Linguistics) and Tamara Rathcke (English Lingistics), as well the assistant professor Diego Frassinelli (Artificial Intelligence).

We warmly welcome also Anja Weingart, who joined Georg Kaiser’s work group on April 1st. She takes the place of Michael Zimmermann as postdoctoral researcher in the ANR-DFG research project Uncovering Verb-Second Effects. An Interface-Based Typology, led by Georg Kaiser and Maia Duguine (Bayonne, IKER UMR 5478-CNRS).

Leaving Konstanz

Michael Zimmermann left the department on March 31st. For many years, he was a member of Georg Kaiser’s work group. In 2012, he submitted his dissertation and most recently he was involved in the ANR-DFG research project Uncovering Verb-Second Effects. An Interface-Based Typology led by Georg Kaiser and Maia Duguine (Bayonne, IKER UMR 5478-CNRS). Unfortunately, he has decided to leave the department to work outside linguistics. We wish him all the best.

More News

• On March 5th, Andreas Trotzke has been elected as Advisory Board Member for the DGfS (German Linguistic Society) and as DGfS Representative of "Lehramtsinitiative" (Initiative for Linguistics in Language Education).
   
• Two new projects with George Walkden as PI are starting in April 2020. The first, Germanic dispersion beyond trees and waves, is funded by the DFG for three years and aims to shed new light on the early history and interrelationships of the Germanic languages. The project's doctoral researcher is Frederik Hartmann. The second project, Linguistic forecasting, is supported by the Volkswagen Foundation programme “Original - isn't it?” For one year, and allows George to take research leave to investigate the controversial topic of predicting language change.
   
• We congratulate Katharina Zahner who was granted one of the independent research grants 2020 by the Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz. The project's title is: Getting the question: How German infants acquire intonational contrasts.
   
• We call your attention to several press publications reported about the research of the BabySpeechLab:

1. The University published a press release about the Babylab's participation in the ManyBabies project, an international research cooperation of 67 Babylabs. In a large-scale study, it was confirmed that Babies prefer infant-directed over adult directed speech, even if they hear infant-directed speech in a foreign language. Link to the press release. These news were also published in the Südkurier on March 23rd and 24th.
2. Bettina Braun and Katharina Zahner gave an interview to the Süddeutsche Zeitung which published an article on infant-directed speech on March 3rd.
3. Katharina Zahner gave an interview to SWR3 about infant-directed speech which was broadcast in the SWR3 Morning Show on February 6th.

• Ryan Bochnak, together with colleagues from the University of Manchester (Margit Bowler, Emily Hanink, and Andrew Koontz-Garboden) are organizing a workshop at the DGfS annual meeting in Hamburg, March 4-6. The title of the workshop is: "Variation in the Lexical Semantics of Adjectives and their Crosslinguistic Kin". The programme may be found here.
   
• The first issue of the new John Benjamins journal Pedagogical Linguistics, co-edited by Andreas Trotzke and Tom Rankin, is now published. Since the first years will be crucial for setting the highest standards for this new journal, members of our department are encouraged to spread the word among colleagues, students, and friends, and to tell them about the option to submit relevant work to Pedagogical Linguistics: https://benjamins.com/catalog/pl

Publications by Members of the Department

• Walkden, George, & Hannah Booth. 2020. Reassessing the historical evidence for embedded V2. In Rebecca Woods & Sam Wolfe (eds.), “Rethinking verb second”, 536-554. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
   
• Natasha Korotkova's paper Evidential meaning and (not-)at-issueness has been accepted to “Semantics & Pragmatics”.
   
• Bayer, Josef & Constantin Freitag. 2020. How much verb moves to second position? In: Horst Lohnstein & Antonios Tsiknakis (eds.), “Verb Second – Grammar internal and grammar external interfaces”. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter [series: Interface Explorations]. 77-122.
   
• Gómez González, María Ángeles & Nicole Dehé. 2020. The pragmatics and prosody of variable tag questions in English: Uncovering function-to-form correlations. "Journal of Pragmatics" 158: 33-52.
   
• Schulte im Walde, S., & Smolka, E. (Eds.) (2020). The role of constituents in multiword expressions: An interdisciplinary, cross-lingual perspective (“Phraseology and Multiword Expressions 4”). Berlin: Language Science Press. (online access)
   
• Smolka, E., & Ravid, D. (Eds.) (2019). What is a verb? – Linguistic, psycholinguistic and developmental perspectives on verbs in Germanic and Semitic languages. “Special Issue of The Mental Lexicon”, 14:2. John Benjamins Publishing Company. (online access)
   
• Smolka, E., & Eulitz, C. (2020). Can you reach for the planets or grasp at the stars? – Modified noun, verb, or preposition constituents in idiom processing. In Sabine Schulte im Walde & Eva Smolka (Eds.), "The role of constituents in multiword expressions: An interdisciplinary, cross-lingual perspective" (179–204). Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3598566. (online access)
   
• Smolka, E. (2019). Aufhören (‘stop’) activates hören (‘hear’) but not Musik (‘music’) – The difference between lexical and semantic processing of German particle verbs. “The Mental Lexicon”, 14(2), 298-318. DOI. (online access)
   
• Andreas Trotzke. 2020. Pädagogische Linguistik -- jetzt! "Linguistische Berichte" 261, 1-23.
   
• Andreas Trotzke & Tom Rankin. 2020. Introduction to Pedagogical Linguistics. "Pedagogical Linguistics" 1, 1-7.
   
• Andreas Trotzke & Tanja Kupisch (eds.). 2020. Formal Linguistics and Language Education: New Empirical Perspectives. Dordrecht: Springer.

Acquisitions of the Library

• Rimpler, Jasmin: Transfer of intonational form in second language acquisition
• Rodi, Silvia: Diminutives in German and Italian: a comparison : analysis of diminutives in child-directed speech situations
• Slabakova, Roumyana: Explorations in second language acquisition and processing
• McMahon, April M. S.: An introduction to english phonology
• Pérez Vidal, Carmen: Language acquisition in study abroad and formal instruction contexts
• Podesva, Robert J.: Research methods in linguistics
• Rothman, Jason: Third language acquisition and linguistic transfer
• Abramov, Valerij Petrovič: Semantičeskie polja russkogo jazyka: monografija

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