Markus Steinbach

Linguistics
Faculty of Philosophy / Institute for German Philology
Courant Research Centre "Text Structures"

Research Interests


  • Theoretical and experimental linguistics
  • Syntax, semantics and pragmatics
  • Interface between semantics and pragmatics
  • Sign languages
  • Text structure
  • Linguistics and literature
  • Grammaticalization
  • Linguistics at school



Education and Employment

2009 -Professor, Göttingen University
2007 - 2008Visiting professor, University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany
2002 - 2009(Senior) Lecturer, University of Mainz, Germany
1998 - 2001Research Assistant, Universities of Tübingen and Mainz, Germany
1998Dr. phil (Linguistics), Humboldt-University Berlin, Germany



Selected honours and awards

2017Research fellow, Hungarian Academy of Science
2013 - Chair of the advisory board of the DGS corpus project of the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg
2010 - 2011Associate fellow, Lichtenberg-Kolleg, University of Göttingen
2007 - 2009Member of the executive committee of the Gutenberg-Forschungs-Kolleg (GFK), University of Mainz
2004 - 2007Vice president of German Linguistic Society (DGfS)


Selected publications

Pfau, R. & Steinbach, M. (2016). Modality and Meaning: Plurality of Relations in German Sign Language. Lingua 170, 69-91.

Steinbach, M. & Onea, E. (2016). A DRT Analysis of Discourse Referents and Anaphora Resolution in Sign Language. Journal of Semantics 33, 409-448.

Quer, J. & Steinbach, M. (2015) Ambiguities in Sign Languages. The Linguistic Review 32, 143-165.

Hosemann, J., Herrmann, A., Steinbach, M., Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, I., Schlesewsky, M. (2013). Lexical Prediction via Forward Models: N400 Evidence from German Sign Language. Neuropsychologia 51, 2224-2237.

Pfau, R. & Steinbach, M. (2013). PERSON Climbing up a Tree: On the Grammaticalization of a Sign Language Auxiliary. Sign Language & Linguistics 16, 189-221.

Pfau, R., Woll, B. & Steinbach, M. (eds.)(2012). Sign Language. Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science (HSK). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Onea, E. & Steinbach, M. (2012): Where Question, Conditionals and Topics Converge. In: Aloni, M. et al. (eds.), Amsterdam Colloquium 2011. LNCS. Heidelberg: Springer, 42-51.

Herrmann, A. & Steinbach, M. (2012) Quotation in Sign Languages – A Visible Context Shift. In: Alphen, I. van & Buchstaller, I. (eds.), Quotatives: Cross-linguistic and Cross-disciplinary Perspectives. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 203-228.

Pfau, R. & Steinbach, M. (2011). Grammaticalization in Sign Languages. In: Heine, B. & Narrog, H. (eds.), Handbook of Grammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 681-693.

Steinbach, M. (2011). What do Agreement Auxiliaries Reveal about the Grammar of Sign Language Agreement? Theoretical Linguistics 37, 209-221.

Antomo, M. & Steinbach, M. (2010). Desintegration und Interpretation. Weil-V2-Sätze an der Schnittstelle zwischen Syntax, Semantik und Pragmatik. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 29, 1-37.

Pfau, R. & Steinbach, M. (2006). Pluralization in Sign and in Speech: A Cross-Modal Typological Study. Linguistic Typology 10, 135-182.