I hold a BA in English and German from the University of Bamberg with a year abroad at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge, and an MPhil in Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics from the University of Oxford, having graduated with Distinction. My master's thesis investigated the semantic pejoration of German words for women through collocational analysis of historical corpus data. I also completed empirical research projects on prosodic phrasing in production planning, the cost of lexical prediction error, and the media discourse on gender-fair language. After graduating, I completed a research internship with the Psychology of Language Department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen. I then returned to Oxford as a research assistant at Professor Aditi Lahiri's Language and Brain Laboratory where I conducted a collaborative EEG fragment priming study on the phonological processing of cognates by German-English bilinguals. Just prior to taking up my doctoral studies at the University of Göttingen, I obtained the Cambridge Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (CELTA) to gain a more applied perspective on second language acquisition and multilingualism. In addition to being associated with RTG 2906 Curiosity, I am a funded member of RTG 2636 Form-Meaning Mismatches at Linguistics in Göttingen (LinG) and affiliated with the Psychology of Language Group at the Georg-Elias-Müller Institute of Psychology. I am also the current student representative for my doctoral programme, Behavior and Cognition (PhD).

Form—Meaning Systematicity in Early Word Learning

My research explores how systematic mappings between form and meaning in the lexicon may aid children in bootstrapping their word learning early in development. Specifically, I am investigating how much regularity in the mapping between form and meaning is attested in the early lexicon across languages, whether words with more systematic form-meaning pairings are acquired earlier in development, and whether words are easier to learn when they overlap in form and meaning with many other words. I am approaching these questions from a corpus-based as well as an experimental perspective to gain insights into the role of form-meaning systematicity in long-term vocabulary development and in real-time word learning. Ultimately, my project will contribute to a mechanistic account of early vocabulary growth and advance our understanding of the universal principles that govern language development and the structure of the lexicon. By highlighting the role of the child’s existing lexical knowledge in guiding vocabulary growth, my research also ties in with current interdisciplinary work in the developmental sciences on the importance of active learning and subjective information sampling for driving learning progress. My project is supervised by Prof Dr Nivedita Mani (Psychology of Language Group, Georg-Elias-Müller Institute of Psychology), Prof Dr Markus Steinbach (Department of German Philology and Sign Lab Göttingen), and Prof Dr Lisa Beinborn (Human-Centered Data Science Group, Institute of Computer Science).

With a keen interest in experimental and computational psycholinguistics, I am passionate about exploring the structure and development of the mental lexicon, first and second language acquisition, lexical processing, prediction, and language in interaction. Over the course of my doctoral studies, I intend to delve deeper into natural language processing and modelling as well as the cognitive neuroscience, development, and evolution of language. Through my association with RTG 2906, I am hoping to gain a broader picture of cognitive development and learning in human and non-human, with a focus on communication and social interaction. I am also trained and maintain an interest in historical linguistics, language change and corpus-based research, with a particular focus on grammaticalization and the Germanic languages.

• Kalinowski, J. A. F.*, Stich, F.*, & Mani, N. (to appear). Modeling the impact of phonological and semantic connectivity on early vocabulary growth. Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) 2025, Prague, Czech Republic. *joint first authors
• Stich, F. & Mani, N. (2025). The systematicity of early mappings: Do similar forms cue similar meanings across the world’s languages? Poster presented at the 7th Workshop on Infant Language Development (WILD) 2025, San Sebastian, Spain, 4—6 June 2025.
• Booth, J., Stich, F., Fritz, I., & Lahiri, A. (2025). Through dick & dünn: Cognates and the legacy of diachronic change in synchronic processing. Paper presented at the 31st Manchester Phonology Meeting 2025, Manchester, UK, 29—31 May 2025.
• Stich, F. (2023). Socio-cognitive factors in the pejoration of German words for women: A corpus study of semantic change. Paper presented at the Oxford Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics 2023, Oxford, UK, 15 September 2023.

Conferences

• September 2025: IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) 2025, Prague, Czech Republic.
• June 2025: 7th Workshop on Infant Language Development (WILD), Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain.
• March 2025: 3rd Human Perspective on Cross-Lingual AI Models (HumanCLAIM) Workshop, Göttingen, Germany.
• September 2023: Oxford Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics, Oxford, UK.
• August 2022: 25th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Oxford, UK.
• June 2022: Oxford Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics, Oxford, UK.

Summer Schools

• September 2025: 8th Institute of Language, Communication and Brain (ILCB) Summer School, Marseille, France.
• January 2025: ‘Neurocognitive Effects in Language Acquisition and Bilingualism’ and ‘Computational Semantics’ courses at LOT (Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics) Winter School, Nijmegen, NL.
• September 2022: Active Learning course at Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (German Academic Scholarship Foundation) Summer Academy, London, UK.
• July 2022: Birmingham Statistics for Linguists Summer School 2022, University of Birmingham, UK.
• July 2022: ‘Trends in the Cognitive Neuroscience of Language’ course at Radboud Summer School, Radboud University, Nijmegen, NL.
• July 2021: ‘Evolutionary Linguistics’ course at Leiden Summer School in Languages and Linguistics, University of Leiden, NL.

Teaching

• Introduction to Psycholinguistics (B.A. English / M.A. Linguistics advanced seminar), Winter 2025/26.
• Wissenschaftliche Kompetenzen für die Psychologie (B.Sc. Psychology module), Summer 2025 (co-taught).

Assistantships & Internships

• January 2025 – August 2025: Research Assistant at the Language and Brain Laboratory, University of Oxford, UK.
• September 2023 – November 2023: Research Intern at the Psychology of Language Department, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, NL.
• October 2016 – August 2020: Student Assistant and Tutor at the Chairs of English and German Linguistics, University of Bamberg, Germany.

Science Communication

• June 2025: Coordination of RTG 2636’s contributions to Göttingen’s Night of Science 2025.

Awards

• Katrina Hayward Prize for Best Performance in the MPhil Cohort of 2022/23, Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, University of Oxford, December 2023.
• Scholar of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (German Academic Scholarship Foundation), 2019–2023.
• DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Graduate Scholarship, 2020–2023.
• DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Year Abroad Scholarship, 2017–2018.