I am a research associate at the Chair of Descriptive and Theoretical Linguistics of the University of Tübingen. Until recently, I was also associated with project C1 “Parametric Variation in the Semantic Component of Grammar” at the Collaborative Research Center 833 (SFB 833).
I completed my PhD in 2020 at the University of Tübingen with the thesis "Comparing Comparatives - New Perspectives from Fieldwork and Processing" that can be found here.
My work is mostly on semantics with additional interests in syntax and pragmatics. The aim of my research is to gain a deeper understanding of the architecture of language by focusing on cross-linguistic variation and processing. My concrete research interests center around the topics of degree constructions, alternative semantics, definiteness and quantification across languages. Recently, I became particularly interested in topics concerning multilingual grammar.
On the empirical side, I have been doing fieldwork on Tundra Nenets, a Samoyedic language spoken, among others, in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug in Russia. I am also conducting experiments on comparison constructions cross-linguistically.
Generally, I am particularly intrigued by the question of how formal linguistic theory fares in the light of different kinds of empirical data and what we can learn about grammar by enriching our theory with new insights gained from new data.
You can download my CV here.
News (upcoming and recent):
- I am so excited to attend the 10th jubilee edition of our TripleA workshop series in June 7-9th in Potsdam. I will give a talk on intervention effects in Tundra Nenets on June 8th.
- I gave a talk at Tu+ in Harvard together with Sigrid Beck and Robin Hörnig on correlatives in Turkish monolinguals and Turkish-German bilinguals beginning of March, 2023.
- out now! Howell, A., V. Hohaus, P. Berezovskaya, K. Sachs, J. Braun, Ş. Durmaz & S. Beck (2022). "(No) Variation in the Grammar of Alternatives''. In: H. Zeijlstra et. al (eds.), Linguistic Variation 22(1): 1-77. http://doi.org/10.1075/lv.19010.how
