I am a research associate at the Chair of Descriptive and Theoretical Linguistics of the University of Tübingen.
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 focus is on theoretical semantics with additional interests in syntax, pragmatics and the interfaces. The aim of my research is to gain a deeper understanding of the architecture of language by focusing on cross-linguistic variation and processing. The phenomena I am working on are degree constructions, alternative semantics, (in)definiteness and presuppositions cross-linguistically. Recently, I became particularly interested in multilingual grammar.
On the empirical side, I have done fieldwork on Tundra Nenets, a Samoyedic language spoken in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug or the Yamal region in Russia. I work on English, but also on German, Russian and Turkish employing mostly fieldwork methods and conducting cross-linguistic experiments.
Generally, I am particularly intrigued by the question of how 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):
- In April 2025, I gave two invited talks in Utrecht:
- The first one on April 9th, 2025 with the title "Tundra Nenets as a Heritage Language" in the scope of Natasha Korotkova's seminar: "Introduction to Linguistics: Language and Mind" at University College, Utrecht.
- The second one on April 10th, 2025 "Presupposition (In)Sensitivity in Monolingual Turkish and Bilingual Turkish-German Speakers: An Experimental Investigation" in the series "Experimental Linguistics Talks" at Utrecht University.
- On March 4th, 2025 I gave a talk with the title "Scalarity beyond Degree Scales - The Case of the Metalinguistic Suffix -rka in Tundra Nenets" at the Kick-off workshop Scalarity at the Syntax-Semantics Interface (SYSSI).
- Out now! Paper with Fabian Schlotterbeck: "Less-Comparatives must be less Ambiguous than exactly-Differentials, Experimental Data Shows", in Proceedings of ELM3.
- On February 6th, 2025, distinguished Professor Lisa Green gave an online talk with the title "Negation and Affect in African American Language" in the scope of my Grant for Innovative Teaching. We had a fruitful discussion and exciting insights into AAL! Thank you, Lisa!
- On January 29th, 2025, our master student Xue Sun presented our poster with the title: "Anything Goes? - Scope Ambiguity in Doubly Quantified Sentences in Ukrainian" at ConSOLE 33. Happy to see this work that started within the scope of my seminar "Fieldwork Methods in Semantics" being materialized!
- 2024 ended well with the following paper: Fabian Schlotterbeck, Polina Berezovskaya & Sigrid Beck (2024): "Age Stratification in Collective Readings of Present Day English 'every'-DPs" in Proceedings of the 24th Amsterdam Colloquium. pp. 323-329.
- I was awarded the Grant for Innovative Teaching from the Academic Affairs Division of the University of Tübingen. For two semesters, I will be teaching a course on Fieldwork Methods in Semantics where we are going to work on African American English with native speakers.
