I'm a post-doc working in theoretical phonology.

Since 2014, I work as a research associate in the DFG project ''Featural Affixes'' at Leipzig University. In June 2014, I defended my PhD-thesis ''A phonological account to morphological length''. From 2009 to 2013, I worked in a DFG-project on ''Hierarchy Effects in Kiranti and Broader Algic'' and between December 2012 and June 2013, I was a visiting student researcher at UC Berkeley (Fulbright grant).

Research Interests

Much of my research centers around supra-semental or prosodic phenomena like length, templatic effects, or tone. I recently started to work on the complex tone systems of some Otomanguean languages: A theoretical account for these is radically simplified if one assumes sub-tonal features and underspecification rather than tonal primitives.

My work often focusses on phenomena at the morpho-phonology boundary. That includes non-concatenative morphology (length-manipulating morphology, reduplication, template effects, or non-concatenative allomorphy in general) but also analyses of lexical exceptions to phonological processes. I often explore the predictions and possibilities arising from (partial) integration of non-segmental afixes like floating features or affixed prosodic nodes.

Inside theoretical phonology, I did a lot of work in the framework of containment, a version of OT where deletion is impossible. This assumption enriches the phonological representation but allows to predict, for example, subtractive morphology as an epiphenomenon from simple affixation. A recent research project together with Jochen Trommer concerns the predictions a containment-based system makes about (un)attested opacity patterns.

I also did research on morphological topics like hierarchy-effects in verbal agreement systems and their adequate theoretical implementation. Especially affix order and blocking-effects between agreement affixes are areas that fascinate me.

I think its important to base theoretical arguments on a representative typological sample or at least on empirical arguments coming from a variety of language families. Languages that I find particularly interesting are various indigenuous languages of America: I worked, for example, on non-concatenative morphology in Salishan, on verbal agreement in Algonquian, on lexical exceptions in Maipurean, or reduplication in Wakashan.