Grammatical theory and language comparison

In grammatical theory, linguists study the human language system to find out what abstract cognitive patterns and structures underlie all languages in the world, enabling humans to acquire any language as their mother tongue independent of their origin at birth. In order to discover these general patterns of human language, it is particularly important to compare languages within a language family and beyond. In a narrow sense, grammar refers to the syntax and morphology of language (i.e. how linguistic signs of varying complexity are combined); in a broad sense, grammar stands for a theory of language in general.

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The following linguists work in the field of grammatical theory and language comparison:

Svitlana Antonyuk (Department of Psychology)

  • Syntax
  • Prosody-Syntax-Semantics Interface
  • Quantification of natural language
  • Argument structure
  • Language contact
  • Word order and information structure
  • Experimental Syntax
  • East Slavic languages

Boban Arsenijević (Department of Slavic Studies)

  • Word formation
  • Syncretism and allomorphy
  • Aspect
  • Subordinate clauses
  • Agreement

Jennifer Brunner (Department of Linguistics)

  • Cut/break verbs (argument structure, valency, lexicalisation)
  • Discourse Grammar: Interactives, Animal Communication

Cemile Celebi (Depatmnet of Theoretical and Applied Translation Studies): 

  • Kurdish languages
  • Phonology, Morphology
  • Syntax

Branislava Ciganović (Department of Slavonic Studies):

  • Word order variation

Yanis da Cunha Department of Romance Studies):

  • construction alternation
  • gender and animacy
  • long-distance dependencies

Oleksandra Damonte-Matveienko (Department of Linguistics):

  • Prosody-Syntax Interface
  • Word Order
  • Ukrainian dialectology
  • Language change
  • Descriptive linguistics

Jeannique Darby (Department of German Studies)

  • Word formation
  • Argument structure

Steffen Heidinger (Department of Romance Studies):

  • Pronouns
  • Valence alternations
  • Secondary predication

Sabine Heinemann (Department of Romance Studies):

(Diachronic) Verbal morphology

Martin Hummel (Department of Romance Studies):

  • Adverbs in the Romania
  • Subjunctive

Gianina Iordachioaia (Department of Linguistics):

  • Word formation
  • argument structure
  • aspect
  • negation

Gunther Kaltenböck (Department of English Studies):

  • Discourse Grammar and Thetical Grammar
  • Construction Grammar
  • Cognitive Grammar

Rebecca Karrer (Department of German Studies): 

  • The syntax-semantics interface
  • Theory of linguistic
  • categorisation

Veronika Mattes (Department of Linguistics):

  • Derivational morphology
  • Morphology-Lexicon Interface
  • Reduplication

Lidia Mazzitelli (Department of Linguistics):

Aleksandra Milosavljević (Department of Slavic Studies):

  • Pronouns and reflexives
  • noun phrase
  • Sentences
  • Verbs (argument structure and valency)

Stefan Milosavljević (Department of Slavic Studies):

  • Verbal aspect
  • Verbal morphology
  • Multifunctionality in morphology
  • Anaphors and pronouns
  • Subject-verb agreement
  • morpho-syntactic reduplication
  • complementation

Martina Rossi (Department of Romance Studies):

  • Prepositional adverbs
  • Pronouns

Daria Seres (Department of Slavic Studies):

  • Nominal phrase
  • Grammaticalisation
  • aspect
  • cross-linguistic semantics
  • Slavic, Romance and Germanic languages

Vesela Simeonova (Department of Slavic Studies):

  • evidentiality
  • mirativity
  • modality
  • embedded clauses
  • tense
  • counterfactuality
  • epistemic future
  • impoliteness
  • Balkan
  • Turkic
  • syntax semantics pragmatics interfaces

Marko Simonovic (Department of Slavic Studies):

  • Morphology
  • Phonology-Syntax-Interface
  • exponence
  • language contact
  • syncretism
  • allomorphy
  • Aspect
  • argument structure

Jelena Stojkovic (Department of Slavic Studies):

  • Phonology
  • allomorphy
  • exponence
  • reduplication
  • language games
  • Optimality theory
  • phonological typology
  • grammatical domain interaction
  • subject-verb agreement

Elnora ten Wolde (Department of English Studies):

  • Functional Discourse Grammar
  • Construction Grammar
  • Cognitive Grammar

Philipp Trojan (Department of English Studies):

  •  Functional Discourse Grammar 
  • Construction Grammar
  • Noun Phrase

Joeri Vinke (Department of Slavic Studies):

  • Syntax
  • Pronouns
  • Reflexive
  • intensifiers
  • Adpositional syntax
  • Differential object marking

Ralf Vollmann (Department of Linguistics):

  • Case marking
  • complex clauses
  • Sino-Tibetan typology

Anna Volodina (Department of German Studies):

  • Connectors of German
  • descriptive syntax of German
  • Genus and gender

Jelena Živojinović (Department of Slavic Studies):

  • Language contact
  • non-finite verb forms
  • aspect
  • clitics
  • grammaticalisation
  • diachrony
  • Minority languages/endangered languages