PD Dr. Peter Öhl

Research Interests:

comparative and historical syntax

language history and language change
theory of grammar (especially the interfaces of syntax, semantics and pragmatics)

Current Research:

comparative syntax:	(functional phrases in the domains of C and I; clause mood; syntactic subordination)
	factors of 'verb second' beyond word order typology interrogative clauses in English and German analytic tenses

interfaces:	(syntax, semantics and pragmatics)
	clause mood between semantics and pragmatics interrogatives and interrogative clauses: grammatical, logical and pragmatic licensing conditions predicate semantics and its projection into syntax interaction of linguistic competence and performace

language change:	(grammaticalisation; language change & cultural history)
	development of pronouns and anaphors in the Germanic languages diachronic syntax of complementation in Germanic and Romance development of affixes diachronic syntax of analytic inflection etymology

Past Research:

Most recently:

particle verbs and particle verb nominalisation
predicate classes
formalist and functionalist explanations of grammaticalisation
discourse configuration and syntactic relations: the interplay of pragmatics and syntax
diachronic syntax of embedded interrogatives in Persian
medieval language and literature in an extended framework of translation

More recently: the role of functional projections in syntactic variation

comparative syntax of subordination in German, Japanese and Persian

the grammaticalisation of the Romance and the Germanic perfect periphrasis revisited

grammaticalisation in the C-Domain

Recently: economy of projection and derivation; the structure of the type feature system

Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics at the interfaces
compositional semantics of predicates and their decomposition in syntax
type features, C and economic clause structure
topics and focus in embedded clauses
non-declarative subordinate clauses

Earlier: periphrastic inflection; complex predicates; infinite verbs; hypotaxis and clause types in Indo-European languages

a diachronic theory of complex predicates

patterns of syntactic subordination

different developments of IE complementisers

diachronic infinitival syntax

the diachrony of subject- and topic prominence

Earliest research: the historical development of Germanic and German.

Germanic verbal morphology

the diachronic composition of the German lexicon

Germanic literature in the framework of a theory of translation

vita academica

(CV as .pdf)

1991-94: study of Indo-European Linguistics and undergraduate education in German and English philology and Medieval History at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau (teachers: Helmut Rix, Heinz Klingenberg, James E. Cathey , Elke Ronneberger-Sibold , Christian Mair , Richard Matthews , Thomas Zotz);

1994-95: studies of Old English, Diachronic Linguistics and Generative Grammar at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (teachers: Robert P. Creed , F. R. Higgins , Kyle Johnson , Hagit Borer );

1995-97: M.A. education in syntax and history at the University of Stuttgart (teachers: Hubert Haider , Sten Vikner , Ian Roberts, Wolfgang Stürner);

summer 1997: M.A. in German and English Linguistics and in History at the University of Stuttgart; Master's Thesis: "Die Syntax des Deutschen Perfekts im Synchron-/ Diachronen Vergleich" (The Comparative Syntax of German Perfect Tense in Synchrony and Diachrony); awarded with the "Preis der Freunde und Förderer der Universität Stuttgart für besondere wissenschaftliche Leistungen" (Stuttgart local scientific award);

10/1997 to 09/2000: external assistant professor at the " Institut für Linguistik/ Germanistik "; graduation in linguistics (topic: see below; supervisor: Ian Roberts; advisors: Hubert Haider , Jürgen Pafel and Hans Kamp ) with the graduate programme "Linguistic Foundations of Language Processing" at the University of Stuttgart;

since 02/2001: active member and webmaster of the GeSuS e.V. ; Organiser of Workshops on Comparative Syntax: 2001 in Bochum / Germany; 2002 (in Bratislava) ; 2003 in Hradec Kralove; 2004 in Szombathely; 2005 in Trnava.
since 08/2002: chairperson of GeSuS e.V.; head of the section for linguistic conferences.
01/2002: DISSERTATION finished; a generative inquiry on economy principles in natural language and on the syntax and semantics of subordination and of clause mood. It is based on a corpus of 17 spoken languages and several of their ancestors. Title: 'Economical Computation of Structural Descriptions in Natural Language'. (Summary)
10/2001 to 09/2003: assistant professor at the "Institut für Linguistik/ Germanistik "of the University of Stuttgart; teaching: formal linguistics, generative syntax, diachronic linguistics and syntax, syntax-semantics interface, clause mood, general semantics; see also the information page of the institute .

10/2003 to 03/2004: linguistic freelancer; preparation for the subsequent project work on grammaticalisation:

04/2004 to 09/2005: research associate in the DFG-project: The Role of Functional Projections in Processes of Grammaticalisation at the University of Frankfurt/ Main, Institute of Cognitive Linguistics;

10/2005 to 12/2005: substitute postdoc in the graduate program 'Clause types: Variation and Interpretation' at the University of Frankfurt/ Main;

02/2006 to 12/2011: editor in chief for the journal Sprache & Sprachen

10/2006 to 09/2009: substitute professor at the University of Wuppertal

10/2009 to 03/2011: substitute professor at the University of Munich

04/2011 to 07/2012: substitute professor at the University of Freiburg/Breisgau

10/2013 to 03/2016: lecturer at the University of Wuppertal

04/2016 to 03/2017: substitute professor at the University of Bochum

04/2017 to 09/2017: substitute professor at the University of Tübingen

04/2019 to 05/2021: lecturer at the University of Wuppertal