Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

CV and research fields

Professional experience

  • since 2009: Full Professor at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
  • 2007-2008: Head of the department of Communication and Information Science at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
  • 2005-2008: Associate Professor (Universitair Hoofddocent) at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
  • 2001-2003: Deputy for several chairs at the Universities of Bielefeld, Leipzig, and Jena.
  • 1997-2004: Researcher in the Sonderforschungsbereich ‘Ressourcenadaptive kognitive Prozesse’ in the project ‘Constraint-based higher-order representations for underspecified semantics (CHORUS)’ at the Universität des Saarlandes.
  • 1994-1996: Member (1994) and head (1995-96) of the sections ‘Semantic Construction’ and ‘Semantic Evaluation’ of the German ‘Verbmobil’ project (machine translation of spoken language) for IBM Germany.
  • 1994-1996: Researcher in the Sonderforschungsbereich 340 Stuttgart-Tübingen-Heidelberg ‘Sprachtheoretische Grundlagen für die Computerlinguistik’ in the research project ‘Wissensquellen für die Interpretation von Modifikationsstrukturen’.
  • 1989-1993: Researcher in the research project ‘Theory of the Lexicon’ at the University of Konstanz.

  

 

Education

  • 1993: PhD in Linguistics, Universität Konstanz.

 

 

Research topics

My research is situated in the domain of semantics and its interfaces with syntax and pragmatics. I investigate these topics both from a theoretical and a computational point of view. My main foci of investigation are:

  • aspectual semantics
  • lexical semantics
  • discourse structure
  • metaphor and metonymy
  • semantic underspecification

  

 

 

Scholarships and awards

  • dissertation award 'Award of the City of Konstanz for the promotion of junior academics at the University of Konstanz' (prize for the best dissertation of the year 1993 in Language and Literature)
  • scholarship of the Bavarian State

 

 

Memberships