born in Aachen (Germany), 1962
Education/Qualifications
1991 PhD in Romance Philology (University of Freiburg/Breisgau, Germany)
1988 MA in Romance Philogogy, Linguistics (University of Freiburg/Breisgau, Germany)
1983/84 Scholarship by the German Academic Exchange Service (Université de Poitiers, France)
1981-1983 Romance Philology, Slavic Philology, Linguistics (University of Bonn)
Positions held
2015– Research Associate, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution), Leipzig
2015–2020 Postdoctoral researcher, Leipzig University (Philological Faculty), ERC-funded project “Grammatical Universals”
2011–2015 Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Department of Linguistics), Leipzig
2008-2011 Research position in project “Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures” financed by the DFG (German Science Foundation), University of Gießen
2003-2008 Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Department of Linguistics), Leipzig
2000-2003 Maternal leave
1998-2000 Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Department of Linguistics), Leipzig
1991-1998 Assistant professor, Romance Philology Department, University of Bamberg (Germany)
Ongoing research projects
- Grammatical coexpression patterns in creoles and their ancestry languages
- Functional adaptedness in creole languages (collaboration with Martin Haspelmath, MPI-SHH & Leipzig University)
- Areal patterns in creoles world-wide (based on data in: Atlas of pidgin and creole language structures, 2013, http://apics-online.info)
- Complex sentences in creole languages (collaboration with Stefano Manfredi & Nicolas Quint, labex Axe 3, gd2, Paris)
- Sampling methods in creole languages
- Language contact in a world-wide perspective (collaboration with Martin Haspelmath, MPI-SHH & Leipzig University)
- Cross-signing data in comparison to spoken pidgins and creoles (collaboration with Ulrike Zeshan, UCLan)