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 work is on theoretical semantics with additional interests in syntax and pragmatics and their 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 also work on English, 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):
- brand new paper out! Polina Berezovskaya (2024): "Tundra Nenets: A Heritage Language in Its Own Land? Linguistic Identity and Language Loss" Languages 9, no. 11: 348. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9110348. I ventured out into sociolinguistics. This paper and the story of one of my consultants contained in it is very dear to my heart, since it addresses the dire situation of the Tundra Nenets people in Russia. I hope that it helps raising awareness to the challenges of the Tundra Nenets people and other minorities.
- Fabian Schlotterbeck, Sigrid Beck and I will present a poster with a lightning talk with the title "Age stratification in collective readings of Present Day English 'every'-DPs" at the Amsterdam Colloquium 2024 on December 20th, 2024.
- out now! Polina Berezovskaya (2024): "Variation in the Grammar of Alternatives — Are there Intervention Effects in Tundra Nenets?" In Lecavelier, Jeanne, Niklas Geick, Mira Grubic, Prarthanaa Bharadwaj, Malte Zimmermann: Proceedings of TripleA 10: Fieldwork Perspectives on the Semantics of African, Asian and Austronesian Languages. 106-122. https://doi.org/10.25932/publishup-66283
- 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.
