Click here for a list of selected talks and outreach activities.

Publications

Monographs and edited books

• Hellwig, Birgit, Shanley E. M. Allen, Lucinda Davidson, Rebecca Defina, Barbara F. Kelly & Evan Kidd (eds). 2023. The acquisition sketch project. (Language Documentation and Conservation Special Publication, 28.) Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
• Margetts, Anna, Sonja Riesberg & Birgit Hellwig (eds.). 2022. Caused accompanied motion: Bringing and taking events in a cross-linguistic perspective. (Typological Studies in Language 134.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2019. A grammar of Qaqet (Mouton Grammar Library 79). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110765793
• Schneider-Blum, Gertrud, Birgit Hellwig & Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (eds.). 2018. Nuba Mountain Language Studies: New Insights. (Grammatical Analyses of African Languages 57). Köln: Rüdiger Köppe. 
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2011. A grammar of Goemai. (Mouton Grammar Library 51.) Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2003. The grammatical coding of postural semantics in Goemai (a West Chadic language of Nigeria). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

Articles and book chapters

• Defina, Rebecca, Shanley E. M. Allen, Lucinda Davidson, Birgit Hellwig, Barbara F. Kelly & Evan Kidd. 2023. Sketch Acquisition Manual (SAM), Part I: The sketch corpus. Language Documentation and Conservation SP 28. 5–38.
• Defina, Rebecca, Shanley E. M. Allen, Lucinda Davidson, Birgit Hellwig, Barbara F. Kelly & Evan Kidd. 2023. Sketch Acquisition Manual (SAM), Part II: The acquisition sketch. Language Documentation and Conservation SP 28. 39–86.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2022. Language acquisition and language socialization. In Svenja Völkel & Nico Nassenstein (eds.), Approaches to Language and Culture, 33–52. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110726626-002
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2022. Expressing events of directed caused accompanied motion in Qaqet. In Anna Margetts, Sonja Riesberg & Birgit Hellwig (eds.), Caused accompanied motion: Bringing and taking events in a cross-linguistic perspective, 341-368. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.134.12hel
• Hellwig, Birgit & Dagmar Jung. 2022. Events of caused accompanied motion in Qaqet and Dëne Sųłıné child language corpora. In Anna Margetts, Sonja Riesberg & Birgit Hellwig (eds.), Caused accompanied motion: Bringing and taking events in a cross-linguistic perspective, 397-434. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.134.14hel
• Hellwig, Birgit, Anna Margetts, Sonja Riesberg & Melanie Schippling. 2022. Bringing and taking: A crosslinguistic perspective on caused accompanied motion events. In Anna Margetts, Sonja Riesberg Birgit Hellwig (eds.), Caused accompanied motion: Bringing and taking events in a cross-linguistic perspective, 1-41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.134.01hel
• Tabain, Marija, Marc Garellek, Birgit Hellwig, Adele Gregory & Richard Beare. 2022. Voicing in Qaqet: Prenasalization and language contact. Journal of Phonetics 91. 101138. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2022.101138
• Tabain, Marija & Birgit Hellwig. 2022. Qaqet. Journal of the International Phonetic Association. First View. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025100321000359
• Hellwig, Birgit, Rebecca Defina, Evan Kidd, Shanley E.M. Allen, Lucinda Davidson & Barbara F. Kelly. 2022. Child language documentation: The sketch acquisition project. Language Documentation and Conservation SP 25. 29–58.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2021. Children’s narratives in Papua New Guinea: A case study of Qaqet. In Christiane Bongartz & Jacopo Torregrossa (eds.), What’s in a narrative? Variation in storytelling at the interface between language and literacy, 99–120. Bern: Peter Lang.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2021. Initial observations on complex predicates in Qaqet children’s language. First Language 41(4). 406-429. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0142723720922004
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2020. Child language documentation: A pilot project in Papua New Guinea. Language Documentation and Conservation Special Publication 21. 23–42.
• Schneider-Blum, Gertrud & Birgit Hellwig. 2020. Property concepts in Tabaq: More than one road can lead to Rome. Faits de Langues 51. 63–78.
• Casaretto, Antje, Gerrit J. Dimmendaal, Birgit Hellwig, Uta Reinöhl & Gertrud Schneider-Blum. 2020. Roots of Ergativity in Africa (and Beyond). Studies in African Linguistics 49(1). 111–140.
• Hellwig, Birgit & Dagmar Jung. 2020. Child-directed language – and how it informs the documentation and description of the adult language. Language Documentation and Conservation 14. 188–214.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2020. Language contact in the West Chadic language Goemai. In Anthony P. Grant (ed.), Oxford handbook of language contact, 431-448. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2019. Linguistic diversity, language documentation and psycholinguistics: The role of stimuli. In Aimée Lahaussois & Marine Vuillermet (eds.), Methodological tools for linguistic description and typology (Language Documentation and Conservation SP 16), 5-30.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2019. Grammatical relations in Katla. In Alena Witzlack-Makarevich & Balthasar Bickel (eds.), Argument selectors: New perspectives on grammatical relations (Typological Studies in Language 123), 511-531. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
• Hellwig. Birgit. 2018. Verbal derivation in Katla: The comitative. In Gertrud Schneider-Blum, Birgit Hellwig & Gerrit Dimmendaal (eds.), Nuba Mountain language studies: New Insights, 209-232. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
• Schneider-Blum, Gertrud & Birgit Hellwig. 2018. Reference tracking in Tima and its interplay with split ergative marking. Studies in Language 42(4). 970-993.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2018. 'See this sitting one': Demonstratives and deictic classifiers in Goemai. In Stephen C. Levinson, Sarah Cutfield, Michael J. Dunn, Nick J. Enfield, Sérgio Meira & David Wilkins (eds.), Demonstratives in cross-linguistic perspective, 134-149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108333818.007
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2017. Verbal number in Goemai (West Chadic). Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 70(1). 7-27. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/stuf-2017-0002
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2017. Emotions in Goemai (Nigeria): Perspectives from a documentary corpus. In Anne Storch (ed.), Consensus and Dissent, 213-227. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2017. The "goe" in Goemai: The development of modifiers in a Chadic language. In Raija Kramer & Roland Kießling (eds.), Mechthildian approaches to Afrikanistik: Advances in language based research on Africa. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
• Tabain, Marija & Birgit Hellwig. 2015. Goemai. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 45. 81-104. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025100314000243
• Hellwig, Birgit & Gertrud Schneider-Blum. 2014. Tabaq: In a state of flux. Dotawo 1. 63-81.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2013. Verbal morphology in Katla. In Thilo C. Schadeberg & Roger M. Blench (eds.), Nuba Mountain Language Studies, 237-250. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2012. Lexicalization of property concepts: Evidence for language contact on the southern Jos Plateau (Central Nigeria)? Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 33(1). 67-95.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2011. The semantics of copy pronouns in Goemai. In Gratien G. Atindogbé, Roger M. Blench & Anne Storch (eds.), Copy pronouns: Case studies from African languages, 55-69. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2011. Lexical aspect classes in Goemai (West Chadic). In Doris Löhr & Ari Awagana (eds.), Topics in Chadic Linguistics VI, 85-100. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2010. Meaning and translation in linguistic fieldwork. Studies in Language 34(4). 802-831.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2010. Different types of data: A case study of Goemai demonstratives. Journal of West African Languages 37(1). 7-22.
• Stebbins,Tonya N. & Birgit Hellwig. 2010. Principles and practicalities of corpus design in language retrieval: Issues in the digitization of the Beynon corpus of early twentieth century Sm’algyax materials. Language Documentation and Conservation 4. 34-59.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2009. The semantics of clause linking in Goemai. In Robert M.W. Dixon & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.), The semantics of clause linking: A cross-linguistic typology, 318-335. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2007. To sit face down: Location and position in Goemai. Linguistics 45(5/6). 893-916.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2007. Postural categories and the classification of nominal concepts: A case study of Goemai. In Andrea C. Schalley & Dietmar Zaefferer (eds.), Ontolinguistics. How ontological status shapes the linguistic coding of concepts, 279-297. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2007. Fieldwork among the Goemai of Nigeria: Discovering the grammar of property expressions. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 60(1). 67-80.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2006. Field semantics and grammar-writing: Stimuli-based techniques and the study of locative verbs. In Felix K. Ameka, Alan Dench & Nick Evans (eds.), Catching language. The standing challenge of grammar writing, 321-358. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2006. Complement clause type and complementation strategies in Goemai. In Robert M.W. Dixon & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.), Complementation: A cross-linguistic typology, 104-223. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2005. Serial verb constructions in Goemai. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & Robert M.W. Dixon (eds.), Serial verb constructions: A cross-linguistic typology, 88-107. Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2004. A grammatical sketch of Goemai: Word classes. In Gábor Takács (ed.), Egyptian and Semito-Hamitic (Afro-Asiatic) studies, 296-341. Leiden/Boston: Brill.
• Hellwig, Birgit & Joseph A. McIntyre. 2000. Hausa plural systems: A diachronic presentation. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 21(1). 1-43.

Other

• Hellwig, Birgit, Shanley E. M. Allen, Lucinda Davidson, Rebecca Defina, Barbara F. Kelly & Evan Kidd. 2023. Introduction: The acquisition sketch project. Language Documentation and Conservation SP 28. 1–3.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2022. Adpositions and their distribution: a reply to Zygmunt Frajzyngier’s ‘Toward a functional typology of adpositions: theoretical implications’. Folia Linguistica 56.2. 453-459. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/flin-2022-2022
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2022. A language documentation perspective: A commentary on Kidd and Garcia (2022). First Language 42.6. 770–773.
• Schneider-Blum, Gertrud, Sonja Riesberg, Birgit Hellwig & Nikolaus P. Himmelmann. 2022. On resolving prominence conflicts: Exceptional case marking in Tima and Yali. In Chiara Gianollo, Łukasz Jędrzejowski & Sofiana I. Lindemann (eds.), Paths through meaning and form: Festschrift offered to Klaus von Heusinger on the occasion of his 60th birthday, 211–215. Cologne: University of Cologne.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2018. Sprachenvielfalt – Sprachentod. Rezensionsaufsatz zu Nicholas Evans, Wenn Sprachen sterben – und was wir mit ihnen verlieren. Sprachwissenschaft 43.3. 365-371.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2014. Goemai. In Carol Genetti (ed.), How languages work: An introduction to language and linguistics, 391-403. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hellwig, Birgit. 2006. Semantics, Fieldwork methods. In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 11, 180-182. Oxford: Elsevier.