Guest Talks & reading group

Always on Wednesdays, 4.15-5.45 p.m.,  campus Neues Palais, room 1.09.1.02

Talks summer term 2025

16.07.2025 (Pe)

9.07.2025 Talk Prof. Mladen Uhlik (University of Ljubljana) "Passives in South-Slavic"

2.07.2025 (Ai)

25.06.2025 (Mi)

18.06.2025 (Se)

4.06.2025 Talk Kirill Kozhanov (U Potsdam) "Patterning of Ukrainian dialects (preliminary results based on the Atlas of the Ukrainian language)".

28.05.2025 SVM Linguistic Lecture SeriesTalk Wojciech Lewandowski (Universität Potsdam) & Jan Fliessbach (Universität Potsdam) "In Search of the Hidden Path: The Zero-Encoding Construction in Satellite-Framed English vs. Verb-Framed French", Haus 12, Raum 0.05

21.05.2025 (Ma)

14.05.2025 Talk Dr. Andrey Shluinsky(HU Berlin)  "Wordhood in prefixing languages: Evidence from Ghana-Togo Mountain"

7.05.2025 Talk  Prof. Nina Dobrushina (CNRS DDL Lyon), "Discourse phenomena channel diffusion of grammatical phenomena: the case of wishes and optatives"

30.04.2025 Talk Ludger Paschen (ZAS, Berlin), "Word-internal pauses in the DoReCo corpus" (abstract). Exceptionally 2 pm - 4 pm, different (!) room 1.08.0.56

23.04.2025 Reading group Natalia Levshina, Cross-Linguistic Trade-Offs and Causal Relationships Between Cues to Grammatical Subject and Object, and the Problem of Efficiency-Related Explanations. Frontiers in Psychology 12. Article 648200.

Talk by Aleksandrs Bedicevskis cancelled!

16.04.2025 Talk  Prof. Martin Haspelmath (MPI EVA Leipzig), "Against grammatical categories (and what to replace them with)"

9.04.2025 Paper discussion Dr. Sergey Say (U Potsdam), "Bivalent verb classes across Slavic: areal and genealogical patterns" (with supplementary materials)

Talks winter term 2024/25

12.02.2025 Talk / SVM Lecture Series Ifeoluwa Abidoye, "Phraseological patterns of verbs in Nigerian Englishes" 

5.02.2025 Talk Dr. Gleb Pilipenko, "Code-switching in Slavic language islands"

29.01.2025 Talk / SVM Lecture Series  Dr. Kateryna Iefremenko (ZAS Berlin), "Word order in heritage Turkish: The Role of Cross-Linguistic Influence, Internal Dynamics, and Register"

22.01.2025 Two parts !!: 1. Proposal discussion, Dr. Berfin Aktaṣ, 2. Reading group Laura Becker and Matías Guzmán Naranjo, "Replication and methodological robustness in quantitative typology" (accepted for publication in Linguistic Typology) + a very short Ilja's response

15.01.2025 Talk Prof. Outi Tuomainen (U Potsdam), “Speakers in interaction: Maximizing ease, minimizing effort?”

8.01.2025 Discussion of a chapter draft  Wakweya Gobena, Corpus comparison of possessive constructions in Oromo, Sheko and Amharic. Work in progress.

18.12.2024 TalkDaria Alfimova (U Potsdam), Each Baltic valency is Baltic in its own way? Evidence from parallel subtitles

11.12.2024, lecture hall 1.12.0.01, 15.00-16.45 (time & place change!) Talk Danguole Kotryna Kapkan (University of Vilnius), "BE perfects: grammaticalisation and typology". 

4.12.2024 Talk Dr. habil. Peter Arkadiev (University of Potsdam), "Typology and diachrony of ambifixes: Preliminary observations"

27.11.2024 Paper discussion  Dr. Masha Ovsjannikova, "The Facets of Sight: Slavic Verbs of Visual Perception in a Parallel Corpus" (draft).

20.11.2024 Talk / SVM Lecture Series  Dr. Lukasz Jedrzejowski, "Getting into the right mood in concessive clauses. A cross-linguistic diachronic perspective", room 1.08.0.58

13.11.2024 Reading group Chen, Victoria & Bradley McDonnell. 2019. Western Austronesian voice. Annual Review of Linguistics 5. 173-195.

06.11.2024 Talk Prof. Kaius Sinnemäki (University of Helsinki), "A typological approach to language change in contact ecologies"

30.10.2024 Paper discussion Aigul Zakirova, Argument encoding in the necessity constructions of Hill Mari (draft).

23.10.2024 Talk / SVM Lecture Series Prof. Luigi Andriani (University of Hamburg), "At the border between hypotaxis and parataxis: evidence from Apulian aspectual periphrases", room 1.12.0.01

16.10.2024 Talk / SVM Lecture Series Prof. John Mansfield (University of Zürich), "Ancient ontologies: Detecting semantic patterns older than language families"

Talks & Reading summer term 2024

• 17.07.2024 Reading group Dr. Sergey Say (University of Potsdam), "Degrees of complexity in valency class systems: implications for efficiency"
• 10.07.2024 Talk Prof. Denis Creissels (University of Lyon), "Typology and diachrony of predicative possession", Handout
• 03.07.2024 Talk Prof. Jeff Good (University at Buffalo), "Developing a typological approach to the study of constituency: Two case studies based on Chichewa”
• 26.06.2024 Reading Group Harald Clahsen. 2016. Contributions of linguistic typology to psycholinguistics. Linguistic Typology 20(3). 599-614. Talk cancelled!! P̴r̴o̴f̴.̴ ̴K̴a̴i̴u̴s̴ ̴S̴i̴n̴n̴e̴m̴ä̴k̴i̴ ̴(̴U̴n̴i̴v̴e̴r̴s̴i̴t̴y̴ ̴o̴f̴ ̴H̴e̴l̴s̴i̴n̴k̴i̴)̴,̴ ̴"̴A̴ ̴t̴y̴p̴o̴l̴o̴g̴i̴c̴a̴l̴ ̴a̴p̴p̴r̴o̴a̴c̴h̴ ̴t̴o̴ ̴l̴a̴n̴g̴u̴a̴g̴e̴ ̴c̴h̴a̴n̴g̴e̴ ̴i̴n̴ ̴c̴o̴n̴t̴a̴c̴t̴ ̴e̴c̴o̴l̴o̴g̴i̴e̴s̴"̴
• 19.06.2024 Talk Dr. Berfin Aktaş, Prof. Manfred Stede, Prof. Ilja Seržant , Dr. Maria Ovsjannikova (University of Potsdam), "Correlations in word order across the languages of the Circum-Baltic area".
• 12.06.2024 Talk Dr. Maria Khachaturyan (University of Helsinki), "Interactional foundations of grammar : Mano relatives clauses as a result of pragmatic cooptation of a topic-comment construction"
• 5.06.2024 No meeting
• 29.05.2024 SVM Lecture Distinct room!! Malte Rosemeyer (Freie Universität Berlin) "Interrogatives in Romance".
• 22.05.2024 Reading group Georgakopoulos, Thanasis, Grossman, Eitan, Nikolaev, Dmitry and Polis, Stéphane. 2022. Universal and macro-areal patterns in the lexicon: A case-study in the perception-cognition domain. Linguistic Typology 26(2). 439-487. 
• 15.05.2024 SVM Lecture Distinct room!! Andreas Hölzl (Universität Potsdam) "The architecture of interrogative systems"
• 8.05.2024 Reading group Denis Creissels,  Transitivity, Valency and Voice. OUP. Forthcoming. Chapter 1 and 4.
• 1.05.2024 No meeting
• 24.04.2024 Talk Olena Shcherbakova (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology), "The evolution of grammatical complexity"
• 17.04.2024 Talk Natalia Logvinova,  "Genitive vs. Apposition in Russian specificational constructions"
• 10.04.2024 Talk Elena Shvedova, "Valency-changing derivations in Neo-Aramaic: intragenetic typology"

Talks + reading group winter term 2023-2024 (room 1.09.1.02, room change!!)

• Talk 07.02.2024 Prof. Dr. Jan Patrick Zeller (Universität Oldenburg), "Spoken Silesian: A variationist approach"
• Reading group 31.01.2024. Francesca Di Garbo & Annemarie Verkerk. 2020. A typology of northwestern Bantu gender systems. Linguistics 60(4). 1169-1239.
• Reading group 24.01.2024. Egurtzegi, A., et al. 2022. The forms and meanings of grammatical markers support efficient  communication. PNAS 118(49), e2025993118. (followed by the discussion of the draft by Kozhanov & Say)
• Talk 17.01.2024 Prof. Dr. Sandra Birzer (Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg), "Factors influencing suffix choice and suffix variation in Slavic verbs"
• Reading group 10.01.2024 T. Florian Jaeger & Elisabeth J. Norcliffe. 2009. The Cross-linguistic Study of Sentence Production , Language and Linguistics Compass 3/4 (2009): 866–887. (The talk originally planned for this day has been cancelled)
• Reading group (starting at 3.50 pm!!!) 20.12.2023 Chousou-Polydouri, Natalia, Inman, David, Huber, Thomas C. and Bickel, Balthasar. "Multi-variate coding for possession: methodology and preliminary results" Linguistics, vol. 61, no. 6, 2023, pp. 1365-1402. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2022-0021
• Talk 13.12.2023 Dr. Olena Pčelinceva (Cherkasy State Technological University), "War, Language and Culture: Changes in cultural and linguistic attitudes in education and culture in central Ukraine after the beginning of Russian aggression". Download the presentation here.
• 6.12.2023 No meeting
• Talk 29.11.2023 SVM lecture, Room 1.09.1.15, Ulrike Demske (Universität Potsdam) &  Barthe Bloom (Universität Potsdam) "Integration, resumption, and adjunction: The relation between Early New High German preposed adverbial clauses and their host"
• Talk 22.11.2023 Prof. dr. Eleanor Coghill (Uppsala University), "New evidence for the grammaticalization of a Neo-Aramaic past perfective marker from a verb of movement"
• 15.11.2023 No meeting
• Talk 08.11.2023 Prof. Dr. Manfred Stede (University of Potsdam), "Contrastive connectives and their coherence relations: corpus studies on German"
• Talk 01.11.2023 SVM lecture, Room 1.09.1.15, Annette Gerstenberg (Universität Potsdam) "LangAge Corpora: A Longitudinal Approach to Linguistic Aging"
• Reading group 25.10.2023 Rik van Gijn & Pieter Muysken. 2020. Highland–lowland relations: A linguistic view. In: Rethinking the Andes–Amazonia Divide. A cross-disciplinary exploration. Ed. by Adrian J. Pearce, David G. Beresford-Jones, Paul Heggarty. UCL Press.
• Talk 18.10.2023 This talk will start at 16.30!!! Dr. Anna Laurinavichyute (University of Potsdam), "Eye-tracking in psycholinguistics. Reading in Russian"

Talks summer term 2023 (reading group see below)

• 19.07.2023 Artemii Kuznetsov (University of Oxford),  "Diachronic Changes of Referential Density in Japanese: a Pilot Study",  4.15-5.45 p.m.
• 05.07.2023 no meeting
• 28.06.2023 Wakweya Gobena (University of Potsdam), "Possessive cxns in Amharic, Omoro and Sheko", 4.15-5.45 p.m.
• 21.06.2023 Prof. Gilles Authier (École Pratique des Hautes Études ),  "Aspect marking in Daghestanian languages", 4.15-5.45 p.m.
• Haus 8, Raum 0.64!! 07.06.2023 Wojciech Lewandowski  "Spatial events in native and second language production contexts", (Haus 8, Raum 0.64), 4.15-5.45 p.m.,  SVM Lecture Series
• 17.05.2023 Prof. Kasper Boyé (University of Copenhagen), "A usage-based theory of grammatical status and its implications for language processing and aphasiology”, 4.15-5.45 p.m.
• 03.05.2023 Dr. Timofey Arkhangelskiy (Hamburg University),  "Udmurt dialectometry: vocabulary, syntax and language contact.", 4.15-5.45 p.m.
• 19.04.2023 Prof. Francesco Gardani (University of Zürich), "Towards a typology of morphological MAT borrowing",  4.15 - 5.45 p.m.
• Eagerly waiting for Prof. Mladen Uhlik (University of Ljubljana), "Impersonal Reflexive Constructions (South Slavic Languages vs. Russian)", 4.15 - 5.45 p.m.

Reading group (Kolloquium) summer term 2023

• 12.07.2023 Röthlisberger, M., Szmrecsanyi, B. 2019. Dialect Typology: Recent Advances. In: Brunn, S., Kehrein, R. (eds) Handbook of the Changing World Language Map. Springer, Cham.
• 05.07.2023 no meeting
• 14.06. Skirgård et al. 2023. Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss. Science Advances 9, eadg6175.
• 31.05. Levshina, Natalia, et al. 2023. Why we need a gradient approach to word order.Linguistics.
• 24.05. Peter Petré & Freek Van de Velde. 2018. The real-time dynamics of the individual and the community in grammaticalization, Language.
• 10.5. This meeting is cancelled.
• 26.04. Evangelia Adamou, Quentin Feltgen, and Cristian Padur. 2021. A unified approach to the study of language contact: Cross-language priming and change in adjective/noun order. International Journal of Bilingualism 25(6), 1635–1654.

Talks winter term 2022 (reading group see below)

• 01.02.2023 Dr. Alena Witzlack-Makarevich (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), "Co-argument sensitivity of argument marking: distribution and variation",  4.15 - 5.45 p.m.
• 25.01.2023: Jan Fliessbach & Johanna Rockstroh (Universität Potsdam) - "Tu sais quoi? Qu’est-ce que tu racontes! Qu’est-ce que tu as? Verb induced object placement patterns in French partial interrogatives" , Abstract This talk will take place at Haus 08, Raum 0.58
• 18.01.2023 Dr. Laura Becker (University of Freiburg), "Zero forms in morphology: Patterns and explanations", 4.15-5.45 p.m.
• 14.12.2022 Dr. Andrey Shluinsky (University of Hamburg), "Aspect in Enets (< Samoyedic < Uralic): a case-study of Slavic-style system in a non-Slavic language", 4.15-5.45 p.m.
• 07.12.2022 Dr. Vladimir Panov (University of Vilnius), "Addressee cross-linguistically: Toward a typology informed by linguistic anthropology and interactional linguistics.", 4.15-5.45 p.m.
• 23.11.2022 12.30-14.00, Ilja Seržant, "Diachronic tendencies in argument flagging patterns of Slavic", external session at the Slavic department of HU Berlin
• 09.11.2022 Dr. Natalya Stoynova (University of Hamburg), "Using corpus methods to assess inter-speaker variation in contact-influenced Russian: data from bilingual Nanai and Ulcha speakers",  4.15-5.45 p.m.
• 6.00-7.30 p.m.!!!!     19.10.2022 Prof. Ewa Golachowska (Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences) "Pogranicze polsko-białoruskie. Perspektywa językowa i socjolingwistyczna /  Польско-беларуское пограничье. Языковая и социолингвистическая перспектива." (this talk will be held in Polish with English or Russian slides), (abstract)
• 12.10.2022 Prof. Björn Wiemer (Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität Mainz), "Unity behind diversity among tense-aspect uses in the non-past domain of Slavic languages", 4.15-5.45 pm. HANDOUT

Reading group (Kolloquium) winter term 2022/2023

• 08.02. Volker Gast* and Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2022. Patterns of persistence and diffusibility in the European lexicon. Linguistic TTypology 26(2), 403-438.
• 11.01 Diessel, Holger & Merlijn Breunesse. 2020. A typology of demonstrative clause linkers. Chapter 12. In Åshild Næss, Anna Margetts & Yvonne Treis (eds.), Demonstratives in discourse,
  305–341. Berlin: LSP.
• 30.11 Levshina, Natalia. 2019. Token-based typology and word order entropy: A study based on Universal Dependencies, Linguistic Typology 23(3). 533–572.
• 16.11 Gardani, F., Zanini, C. 2022. On the Subitizing Effect in Language Contact. In: Levie, R., Bar-On, A., Ashkenazi, O., Dattner, E., Brandes, G. (eds) Developing Language and Literacy. Literacy Studies, vol 23. Springer, Cham. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99891-2_10
• 2.11 Tom Güldemann, Sabine Zerbian, and Malte Zimmermann. 2015. Variation in Information Structure with Special Reference to Africa, Annu. Rev. Linguist. 1:155–78.

Talks summer term 2022 (reading group see below)

• 19.07.2022 Dr. Sergey Say (Potsdam University) "Cross-linguistic variability of valency class systems", room 1.11.2.27, 2.15 - 3.45 p.m.
• 12.07 Dr. Cem Keskin (University of Potsdam) "Transient subordinate clauses in Balkan Turkic in its shift to Standard Average European subordination",  room 1.11.2.27, 2.15 - 3.45 p.m. 
• 12.07 CANCELLED!! Dr. Masha Ovsjannikova (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) "The diachrony of transimpersonal verbs in Russian",  room 1.11.2.27, 2.15 - 3.45 p.m. 
• 28.06.2022 Prof. Martin Haspelmath (Max Planck Institut EVA Leipzig & Leipzig University) "Is cliticization an intermediate stage between free lexeme and affix status?" (abstract), room 1.11.2.27, 2.15 - 3.45 p.m.
• 21.06.2022 Prof. Eleni Bužarovska (Ss. Cyril & Methodius University in Skopje), The rise and the evolution of DOM in the South Slavic periphery, room 1.11.2.27, 2.15 - 3.45 p.m.
• 31.05.2022 Dr. Dmitri Sitchinava (Leipzig University, Helsinki University) Lecture / Talk 1  "Ukrainian grammar against Slavic and typological background" (abstract), room 1.11.2.27, 2.15 - 3.45 p.m. 
• 31.05.2022 Dr. Dmitri Sitchinava (Leipzig University, Helsinki University) Lecture / Talk 2 "Ukrainian dialects, local norms and their corpus representation" (abstract), room 1.11.2.27, 4.15 - 5.45 p.m.
• 24.05.2022 Dr. Susanne Michaelis (Max Planck Institut EVA Leipzig & Leipzig University) "Coexpression pattern of existential and possessive predication in creole languages" (abstract), room 1.11.2.27, 2.15 - 3.45 p.m.

Reading group (Kolloquium) summer term 2022

• 14.06 Daniel, Michael, et al. 2019. Dialect loss in the Russian North: Modeling change across variables, Language Variation and Change 31, 353-376.
• 07.06. Egurtzegi, Aitor, et al. 2022. Cross-linguistic differences in case marking shape neural power dynamics and gaze behavior during sentence planning. Brain and Language 230, 105127.
• 17.05. Creissels, Denis. 2019. Existential predication in the languages of the Sudanic belt. Afrikanistik-Aegyptologie-Online 2019. (doi:urn:nbn:de:0009-10-48607) (https://www.afrikanistik-aegyptologie-online.de/archiv/2019/4860/)
• 10.05. Arkadiev, Peter & Björn Wiemer. 2020. Perfects in Baltic and Slavic. In: Robert Creillin & Thomas Jügel (eds.), Perfects in Indo-European languages and beyond. John Benjamins. 123-214.
• 03.05. Nikolaus P. Himmelmann 2022. Prosodic phrasing and the emergence of phrase structure, Linguistics. Ahead-of-print.
• 26.04. Bethin, Christina Y. 2022. Stress, gender, and declension class in Belarusian. Linguistics 60(1), 239–276.