About Linguistics (and me)

Linguistics is the scientific study of human
language. It is about the knowledge of language that we all have in our
heads. Linguists like me don’t make up rules on how to `speak right’. We
observe how people actually speak, and try to figure out what rules they –
unconsciously – follow.

My own teaching and research focuses on natural language semantics and
pragmatics, in other words, meaning and use of language. A particular
interest of mine is intonational meaning, that is, how tone of voice,
melody or inflection influence the meaning of what we say. I try to develop
formal tools capable of modeling this kind of interaction between meaning,
prosody, and syntax.

Other topics of interest to me are German syntax, binding theory, and
generally all aspects of the syntax-semantics interface.

I wrote two textbooks/survey books, one on the syntax and semantics of binding theory one on intonation and meaning.

I completed one FWF funded project on a new approach to focus interpretation, Unalternative Semantics. As of 2024 I am the principal investigator of a four year project on the semantics of tense and temporal expressions in general, which is part of an FWF funded Spezialforschungsbereich on Language Between Redundancy and Deficiency, which is shared between the universities Graz, Vienna, and Salzburg.

I like to sail, and to play and sing with bands, and am always open to invitations
for either one…