Linguistics in Göttingen - A platform for empirical and theoretical linguistics

In its numerous spoken, written, and signed forms, language emerges as one of the most fascinating windows on the human mind. Modern linguistics aims to discover the principles that govern the formation and use of linguistic expressions, including the acquisition and neurological representation of the corresponding cognitive capacities, as well as the historical dimensions. In all these dimensions, the study of particular languages informs the investigation of the phenomenon of human language as such. Linguistics in Göttingen offers an internationally outstanding location in the field of linguistics thanks to a rare combination of strengths in various subdisciplines.

Linguistics in Göttingen - spread over the English, German, Romance, Slavic, and General Linguistics departments, the University Center on Text Structures, and the Research Training Group on Form-meaning mismatches - have joined forces by focusing their research on the relation between (grammatical) structure and meaning, both from a cross-linguistic perspective and a perspective of language change. We uphold a rich, long-standing tradition of investigating a large spectrum of modern European languages, classical languages, Indian and Iranian, Turkish, as well as Central- and East Asian languages and host one of the most important European centres for the study of sign language.

Linguistics in Göttingen organizes a large number of research activities, varying from conferences (e.g. the Annual Meeting of the German Association of Linguistics 2011, the 53rd Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society) and workshops (e.g. Sinn & Bedeutung 2014), to a weekly colloquium, offers a Master’s and a PhD program in Linguistics and has more than 20 PhD students working on various projects.