Welcome

I joined the Department of Linguistics of the University of Tübingen in Summer 2008 as a Full Professor of Computational Linguistics and head of the Theoretical Computational Linguistics group. Since October 2008, I also serve as head of department. My work currently focuses on three broad areas:

  

• - the use of linguistic insight in computational linguistics, e.g.:
  • - use and correction of corpus annotation (DECCA project)
  • - HPSG, constraint-based grammar formalization and processing
  • - Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning (cf. my yet to be updated OSU ICALL research group pages)
    
    
• - the interface of syntax and information structure, aimed at developing an architecture capable of encoding the constraint interaction from syntax and formal pragmatics to obtain contextual explanations for currently stipulated syntactic constraints
  
  
• - teaching CL and linguistics in a way that combines current technology and research insights with the fundamentals of the field.
  
  

A recent event I co-organized is the CALICO-09 Workshop on "Automatic Analysis of Learner Language (AALL'09)", which follows up on the AALL'08 workshop I co-organized at CALICO-08. Over the summer, I also just taught a course on "ICALL: an emerging interdisciplinary field" at ESSLLI 2009 in Bordeaux.

  

From 2005 to 2008, I was an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Linguistics at The Ohio State University, after working there as an Assistant Professor since 2001. From 1997 to 2000, I was a Lecturer at the Department of Linguistics at the University of Tübingen, where I had worked as a full time researcher in the SFB 340 since 1995.

  

I received my MA degree in Linguistics, Computer Science, and Psychology from the University of Tübingen in 1994, and my PhD in Computational Linguistics there in 2000. During my studies, I enjoyed a year as an exchange student with an ERASMUS grant at the Institut de Recherche en Informatique (IRIT) at the Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse in France.