Welcome to the section of General Linguistics!
News
Kushan script featured in Terra X
A media tip for anyone following the discoveries surrounding the Kushan script: in this episode of Terra X on ZDF, Svenja Bonmann and her colleagues report on their deciphering of this script (from approx. minute 17:19). They then head to a mountain range in Tajikistan to recover and evaluate further characters carved into rocks. They are accompanied by a Tajik archaeologist and local civil protection authorities. Watch it on 1 March at 7:30 p.m. on ZDF and now in the media library (in German).
Presentation: Vereinbarkeit von generativer KI und Lehre
Elen Le Foll and Eva Scheel-Huber gave a presentation on the compatibility of generative AI and teaching on February 4, 2026, as part of the UzK Competence Days “KI in der Hochschulbildung.”
Job advertisement: Research assistant in the field of visual communication (f/m/d)
A position as a research assistant is currently available in the project ‘Visual Feedback in Dyadic Interaction: Cross-Linguistic, Cognitive, and Social Dynamics’. The position is limited until 14 March 2029. All further information can be found in the job advertisement.
EU-financed project on „Conversational Storytelling“
On November 1st 2025, “STORYTEL - At the roots of multimodality: Learning from smartphone-based audiovisual recordings of conversational storytelling”, will launch. This three year Erasmus+ project is coordinated by the University of Cologne and involves the University of Bologna, the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and the University of Murcia. The scientific and administrative team in Cologne includes: Anna Bonifazi (project manager, IfL DL), Sonja Gipper (IfL ASW), Martine Grice (IfL Phonetik), Sandra Debreslioska (IfL DL), Juman Al-qaoud (IfL DL), Madeleine Frings (IfL DL), Felix Rau (DCH), Øyvind Eide (IHD), Lüder Schmidt (FG1) and Nina Kind (D7).
Millions in funding for research into indigenous languagest
The Volkswagen Foundation is funding a project by Dr. Svenja Bonmann to analyse an unknown Central American writing system and attempt to assign it to a language / Approximately one million euros in funding over three years.
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.
News Archive of General and Historical Comparative Linguistics
Current Publications
- Bauer, Anastasia, Sonja Gipper, Tobias-Alexander Herrmann, and Jana Hosemann. 2026. “Rethinking Linguistic Feedback: A Modality-Agnostic and Holistic Approach to Multimodal Addressee Signals in Spoken and Signed Dyadic Interaction.” Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 11 (1): 18539. DOI: doi.org/10.16995/glossa.18539
- Walker, Katherine & Eva van Lier. 2026. A crosslinguistic study of conditions on argument indexing. Linguistics. DOI: doi.org/10.1515/ling-2024-0091
- Anui Sainyiu, Aung Kyawphyo & Aung Si. 2025. The effects of remoteness and forest cover on bird knowledge in two language communities of Myanmar. Journal of Ethnobiology. DOI: doi.org/10.1177/02780771251368557
- 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: 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: 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.