• Kleine Fächer im Portrait: Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft

  Sonja Gipper and Birgit Hellwig introduce the subject of "General Linguistics" in a new blog post from kleinefaecher.de.

   

• The European Huns had ancient Siberian roots

  A linguistic study proves that the European Huns and their Asian ancestors spoke the same Palaeo-Siberian language. This result refutes the previously assumed Turkish.

   

• Multifactor authentication: Cisco Duo

  To protect your data and devices and to prevent cyberattacks, all students are required to use the multifactor authentication Cisco Duo starting May 5, 2025.

   

• Dr. Svenja Bonmann admitted to Junges Kolleg

  We congratulate Dr. Svenja Bonmann, who will be accepted as a fellow of the Young Academy (Junges Kolleg) of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Arts (Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste) on 1 January 2025. The fellowship not only offers financial freedom for her own research, but the admission is also an important honour that enables exchange with other excellent young researchers.

News Archive of General and Historical Comparative Linguistics

• Kidd, Evan, Birgit Hellwig, Rowena Garcia, Rebecca Defina, Lucinda Davidson & Shanley E.M. Allen. 2025. A comparative study of child-directed language across five cultures based on data from the Acquisition Sketch Project. Australian Journal of Linguistics 1–25. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2025.2514825
• Wegdell, Franziska, Caroline Fryns, Johanna Schick, Lara Nellissen, Marion Laporte, Martin Surbeck, Maria A. van Noordwijk, Shelly Masi, Birgit Hellwig, Erik P. Willems, Klaus Zuberbühler, Carel P. van Schaik, Sabine Stoll & Simon W. Townsend. 2025. The evolution of infant-directed communication: Comparing vocal input across all great apes. Science Advances 11(26). eadt7718. (Press release from the University of Zurich).
• Mohr, Susanne, Anastasia Bauer, Liona Paulus. 2025. Cultural Aspects of Sign Languages. Reference Module in Social Sciences. Elsevier. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-95504-1.00638-4.
• Aung Si & Aung Kyawphyo. 2025. Changing perceptions of ornamental plants in urban Yangon, Myanmar. Plants 14(4), 552.
• Aung Si & Nathan Badenoch. 2025. The question of universals in ethnobiological nomenclature: Re-examination with southeast Asian linguistic data. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 48(1): 1–4.
• Passmore, Sam, Birgit Hellwig, Rowena Garcia & Evan Kidd. 2025. The scientific and cultural cost of convenience sampling in the face of rising language endangerment: Highlighting the role of language acquisition. Open Mind 9. 501–514.
• Bauer, Anastasia, Patrick C Trettenbrein, Federica Amici, Aleksandra Ćwiek, Susanne Fuchs, Lisa-Marie Krause, Anna Kuder, et al. 2025. Data Collection in Multimodal Language and Communication Research: A Flexible Decision Framework. (Preprint)
• Çabuk‐Ballı, Sakine, Jekaterina Mazara, Aylin C. Küntay, Birgit Hellwig, Barbara B. Pfeiler, Paul Widmer & Sabine Stoll. 2025. Negation in first language acquisition: Universal or language-specific? Cognitive Science 49. e70044.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2024. Caused accompanied motion in a direction: BRING and TAKE in Katla (Niger-Congo, Sudan). In James Essegbey & Enoch Aboh (eds), Predication in African languages, 238-262. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

• Laureck, Lukas. 2024. Three-participant events in the Wagi dialect of Beria. Studies in African Linguistics 53(1). 97-119.