I’m a professor of linguistics at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena. I hold a venia legendi in General/Theoretical Linguistics as well as German Linguistics, a doctoral degree in Englisch Syntax and an M.A. in Comparative Linguistics and Japanese Linguistics.
My research is focused on German morphosyntax. My approach is cognitively oriented, theory-driven (as opposed to data-driven), and empirical. I use corpus-linguistic and experimental methods. I also have an interest in statistical methods and their foundations in the philosophy of statistics. I’m the principal creator of a suite of very large web corpora (COW). In my current research, I focus on the epistemological foundations of linguistics and fundamental problems of theoretical and empirical paradigms in linguistics while also tackling problems of normal science (doing empirical work on German). I’m currently writing a book about the end of linguistics.
I have a broad teaching experience (both in German and English) in German Linguistics and English Linguistics as well as General/Theoretical Linguistics and Computational Linguistics.
Whenever I’m not doing linguistics, I’m into electrical engineering, restoring and reverse engineering old (seventies and eighties) office computers, deciphering old software code, making electronic music, exploring different approaches to analogue and digital sound synthesis, and everything to do with controlling electrons for fun and pleasure.