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Overview
- I grew up with a strange name in a small village in Franconia.
- I studied Sinology and Comparative Literature at Freie Universität Berlin and majored in General Linguistics at Technische Universität Berlin.
- I spent a year in Beijing, where I studied at 北外 (Beijing Foreign Studies University) and worked at the Microsoft Research Center.
- I was headed to SOAS for a PhD in Language Documentation when Manfred Krifka from Humboldt-Universität asked me whether I’d like to document languages in Vanuatu. I said yes.
- While waiting for the grant decision on the documentation project, I worked with Malte Zimmermann at Potsdam University for 9 months on Chinese Information Structure.
- Between 2009 and 2013, I documented two endangered and previously undescribed languages of Vanuatu: Daakaka and Dalkalaen.
- After the documentation project, I wrote a grant proposal with Manfred Krifka. While waiting on the decision, I held positions at ZAS Berlin, working on embedding structures in Bislama, and at Humboldt-Universität, working on possession, serial verb constructions and modal semantics. In 2014, I had my son Leonhard and took 8 months of parental leave.
- Since March 2016, my project proposal with Manfred Krifka on TAM expressions in Melanesian languages has been funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and is hosted by Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
- During the winter semester of 2017/18 I am a guest professor at Universität des Saarlandes, working on information density in cross-linguistic comparison.
Academic positions
| 2017-2018 | Guest professor, SFB on Information Density and Linguistic Encoding, at Universität des Saarlandes |
| since 2016 | Principal investigator, MelaTAMP project, funded by DFG |
| since 2014 | Post-doctoral research fellow, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin |
| 2013-2014 | Post-doctoral research fellow, Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (Center for general linguistics), Berlin. PB3: Research on clause-embedding predicates in Bislama. |
| 2009-2013 | Research assistant in the DoBeS project documenting the languages of West Ambrym, Vanuatu: Documentation of Daakaka and Dalkalaen |
| 2008-2009 | Research assistant, Special Research Unit 632, Universität Potsdam: Investigations into information structure in Mandarin Chinese |
Non-academic positions
| 2005-2006 |
Language expert, Microsoft Research Center Beijing (research on Text-to- Speech technology, phonology workshops for developers) |
Education
| 2009-2012 | Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Comparative Linguistics, Ph.D. thesis: A Grammar of Daakaka |
| 2003-2008 | Technische Universität Berlin, General Linguistics, M.A.; Freie Universität Berlin, Sinology (minor) and Comparative Linguistics (minor), M.A. |
| 2005-2006 | Beijing Foreign Studies University (北京外国语大学) |
Awards, Grants Scholarships
| 2016 | September. Honorable Mention for the Franz Boas Award. |
| 2016 | March. MelaTAMP project, author of the proposal (with Manfred Krifka). |
| 2015/2016 | Fellowship, SIAS summer institute, The Investigation of Linguistic Meaning: In the Armchair, in the Field, and in the Lab, National Humanities Center and Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. |
| 2004-2008 | Full scholarship, German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) |
| 2005-2006 | Full scholarship for one year at Beijing Foreign Studies University, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) |
| 2005 | Scholarship for a language course (advanced) in Saint Petersburg, Irmgard Ulderup Foundation |
Teaching
| 2016 | TAM im Sprachvergleich (Tense, aspect, mood in cross-linguistic comparison). SE, graduate. Humboldt-Universität. |
| 2015/16 | Dimensionen sprachlicher Variation (Dimensions of linguistic variation). Lecture, undergrad. Humboldt-Universität. |
| 2014/15 | Possessive Strukturen im Sprachvergleich (possessive structures in cross-linguistic comparison). SE, graduate. Humboldt-Universität. |
| 2014/15 | Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen (documenting endangered languages). SE, graduate. Universität Potsdam |
| 2013 | Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen (documenting endangered languages). SE, undergraduate. Universität Potsdam |
| 2012 | Serialverbkonstruktionen (serial verb constructions). SE, graduate. Humboldt-Universität. |
| 2014/15 | Possessive Strukturen im Sprachvergleich (possessive structures in cross-linguistic comparison). SE, graduate. Humboldt-Universität. |
| 2010/11 | Modus und Modalität (Mood and modality). SE, graduate. Humboldt-Universität. |
| 2009 | Fokussemantik (focus semantics). SE, undergraduate. Universität Potsdam |
| 2008/09 | Schriftsysteme (writing systems). SE, graduate. Technische Universität Berlin |
Organization of workshops
| 2017 | with Anne Mucha and Ryan Bochnak Towards an ontology of modal flavors. At Universität des Saarlandes, at the 39. DGfS meeting |
| 2013 | with Felix Rau: Exploring data from language documentation. At ZAS Berlin, funded by Clarin-D, FAG 3 |
Supervision
| 2016 | Jens Hopperdietzel, MA thesis |
| 2016 | Theresa Travelstead, BA thesis |
Editorial work
- Selection of reviewers for a special edition of Studies in Language, during Eva van Lier’s maternity leave.
Peer Reviewing
Journals
- Glossa
- Linguistic discovery
Book manuscript reviewing
Language Science Press
Grant reviewing
Endangered Languages Documentation Program (ELDP)
Conference reviewing
- Sinn und Bedeutung
- TripleA
- Glow
- AFLA