• Job posting: 3 Postdoctoral Researchers (f/m/x)

  A new third-party project funded by the VolkswagenStiftung (‘Exploring an unknown language in an unknown writing system: The Isthmus script’) will begin in April 2026. The Department of Linguistics is seeking to fill three full-time postdoctoral research positions (f/m/x) for this project. More information

   

• 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), 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.

   

• 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.

   

News Archive of General and Historical Comparative Linguistics

• Coenen, Pascal. 2025. Non-canonical quantification in Old Persian: The adverb vasai̯. Folia Linguistica 59(3). 581–632. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/flin-2024-2039.
• Bonmann, Svenja and Simon Fries. 2025. Linguistic evidence suggests that Xiōng-nú and Huns spoke the same Paleo-Siberian language. Transactions of the Philological Society.
• Fries, Simon, Svenja Bonmann, Jakob Halfmann & Natalie Korobzow. 2025. Observations on Lines 1–3 of the Gāndhārī Part of the Dašt-i Nāwur Trilingual (DN IV). Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 175(1). 137–161.
• Coenen, Pascal. 2025 [2023]. Rigvedic báḍ: A presentative particle. Historische Sprachforschung, 136, 21-50.
• Bonmann, Svenja. 2024. Zum Ursprung des sog. ā-Konjunktivs des Latino-Faliskischen, Sabellischen und Venetischen. Glotta. Zeitschrift für griechische und lateinische Sprache 100(2), 246–287.
• Suter, Edgar 2024. Benefactive constructions: A comparative study of the Huon Peninsula languages. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia 42. 128–202.
• Hill, Eugen, Simon Fries, Natalie Korobzow, Laura Günther & Svenja Bonmann. 2024. Towards a New Reconstruction of the Proto‑Yeniseian Sound System. Part II: Word‑Final Consonants. International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics 6(2), 216–293.
• Wiemer, Björn, Eugen Hill, Daniel Kölligan & Jan-Niklas Linnemeier. 2024. Between the birth and death of future tenses. Related languages as a natural lab for research into grammatical change (LINCOM Studies in Indo-European Linguistics 58). München: LINCOM EUROPA.
• Fries, Simon and Natalie Korobzow. 2024. On the dating of sound changes and its implications for language relationship. The case of Proto-Yeniseian *p- > Ket h-, Yugh f-. Diachronica 41(4). 525–555. (Online first).
• Bonmann, Svenja, Sonja Riesberg & Nikolaus P. Himmelmann. 2024. Differential object marking in Western Malayo-Polynesian symmetrical voice languages. Linguistic Typology.