Lügt man, wenn man bewusst auf ein anderes Objekt zeigt, als es korrekt wäre? Neuere Forschung zeigt, dass der wahrgenommene Grad an Sprecher-Commitment zu einer falschen Aussage maßgeblich beeinflusst, ob eine Äußerung als Lüge wahrgenommen wird. Bisher konzentrierten sich Theorien zu Lügen und Commitment vor allem auf gesprochene oder geschriebene Sprache, während Gesten und visuelle Kommunikation weitgehend unbeachtet blieben. Das Projekt untersucht, ob sich Sprecher*innen auch durch Gesten inhaltlich festlegen – also Commitment erwerben – und ob falsche Gesten ebenfalls als Lügen gelten. Mithilfe videobasierter Experimente wird analysiert, wie unterschiedliche Gestentypen zur Wahrnehmung von Commitment und Täuschung beitragen und inwiefern diese Befunde bestehende Theorien über Lügen und Commitment erweitern können. Zudem wird erforscht, welche Rolle der Informationsstatus gestischer Inhalte (at-issue oder nicht-at-issue) für die Bewertung von Commitment und Lügen spielt.


Leitung: Mailin Antomo
Förderzeitraum: 11/2022 - 10/2025
Geldgeber: DFG (Projekt im Rahmen des DFG-Schwerpunktprogramms „Visual Communication. Theoretical, Empirical, and Applied Perspectives“
Projektwebsite

The Sachbeihilfe Revisiting phrasal units in the nominal domain/Neue Wege zur Nominalgruppe aims at empirically and theoretically exploring a novel approach to the syntactic structures of nominal units such as a company/the president in various typologically distinct languages. Couched within recent developments of Labeling Theory (cf. Chomsky 2013, 2015) it considers the possibility that nouns and their related lexical and morphological properties (rather than determiners) determine some of the core syntactic properties which distinguish languages like English, Italian, German on the one hand, and languages like Russian, Latin, Polish on the other. A central feature of the latter languages is that nouns exhibit rich and varied case and gender inflection, which is not the case in the former languages where case and gender morphology on nouns is either absent or sparse. The central hypothesis is that in the latter languages assignment of a category label of the complex syntactic unit proceeds unproblematically even if only a noun is present. By hypothesis, the same is impossible in the former languages where nouns require "support" by a determiner category (like articles) for the nominal complex to receive a category label. Such differences constitute a new lexical parameter on a functional nominalizing head.


Leitung: Andreas Blümel
Förderzeitraum: Oktober 2022 – März 2024 / April 2025 – September 2026
Geldgeber: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) / German Research Foundation
Projektwebsite
Projektwebsite

Das Projekt widmet sich einer noch wenig dokumentierten, mehrheitlich historischen städtischen Varietät im Ostfälischen, die sich zwischen dem 17. und 19. Jahrhundert im Spannungsfeld zwischen dem lokalen Niederdeutsch und dem Hochdeutsch ostfälischer Prägung entwickelt hat. Bislang fehlte eine umfängliche sprachliche Analyse empirisch gewonnener Sprachdaten, die über anekdotische und impressionistische Beschreibungen hinausgeht – und somit die synchronen Überreste dieser bedeutenden historischen Varietät, die im Laufe des 20. Jahrhunderts vor allem unter dem Druck des medial vermittelten Hochdeutsch zunehmend abgebaut wird, wirklich erfassen kann. Das Projekt schließt diese Forschungslücke, indem die städtisch-ostfälische Umgangssprache in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (und Zukunft?) umfassend, ganzheitlich und nachhaltig dokumentiert und beschrieben wird. Die linguistische Analyse aktueller Sprachproduktions- und Interviewdaten erlaubt die Beschreibung der linguistischen Gestalt, der synchronen und diachronen Verbreitung innerhalb des ostfälischen Raums sowie der Entstehung und Entwicklung einer Varietät, die auch gegenwärtig – wenngleich in stark abnehmendem Maße – Einfluss auf die gesprochensprachliche ostfälische Sprachlandschaft hat.


Leitung: François Conrad
Förderzeitraum: 1. Januar 2025 bis 31. Dezember 2026 [1. Projektphase]
Geldgeber: Fritz Thyssen Stiftung>
Projektwebsite

The Research Training Group (RTG) "Form-meaning mismatches" aims to provide a large group of PhD students with an excellent training in linguistic research by jointly investigating one of the most pressing questions in linguistics, namely to what extent morphosyntactic structures are mapped onto meaning. Not only is this investigation critical to linguistic theory, especially when it concerns the interface between morphosyntax and semantics/pragmatics, but it may also help us better understand language variation, language change, language processing and language acquisition. The RTG is part of Linguistics in Göttingen (LinG).


Leitung: Marco Coniglio, Anke Holler, Nina-Kristin Meister, Markus Steinbach, Thomas Weskott (Sprecher: Hedde Zeijlstra)
Förderzeitraum: 2021-2025 (erste Phase)
Geldgeber: DFG
Projektwebsite

Human societies are characterized by sophisticated social relationships and intense collaboration, and their complexity is seen as unique within the animal kingdom. Several facets, however, can also be found in nonhuman primates, the majority of which also lives in social groups with highly differentiated relationships. Thus, the ability to maintain relationships and regulate social behavior at the individual and the group level appears to be a shared and adaptive trait within the primate order. What is still disputed is whether the socio-cognitive processes that play a role in communication and the regulation of social relation-ships in humans and nonhuman primates differ only in degree, or in kind. In this interdisciplinary RTG, we will combine ontogenetic and comparative (phylogenetic) approaches to identify core principles explaining the development, maintenance and function of social relation-ships. Our focus will be on the processing of social signals as key constituents of social relationships, on social monitoring as the ability to track, evaluate and maintain social relationships, as well as the effect of social monitoring on social coordination, such as social learning and the assignment of different roles to individuals in groups. We are specifically interested in the interplay between these different domains. We will set up complementary studies in nonhuman primates, human infants and adults, and bring together develop-mental, cognitive, personality and social psychologists, behavioral and cognitive biologists as well as linguists. We are in the unique position to offer access to various field stations to study nonhuman primates in the wild, run cognitive experiments with nonhuman primates at the German Primate Center (DPZ), test children in established child labs, and apply a variety of neurocognitive methods. With this combination, we aim to push the boundaries of our understanding of social relationships, and to bridge the gaps between the scientific disciplines. Our teaching concept includes interdisciplinary supervisory committees, method courses, a summer school focusing on theory, and workshops co-organized by the students, within the structured PhD program “Behavior and Cognition” at the University of Göttingen.


Leitung: Markus Steinbach (Sprecherin: Julia Fischer)
Förderzeitraum: 2015-2024
Geldgeber: DFG

The Lehmann-Haupt International Doctoral Program (LHIDP) is named after the scientist and researcher Carl Friedrich Lehmann-Haupt, who studied in Göttingen, received his doctoral degree there in 1883 and later carried out his own research work in the South Caucasus region. The program gives 12 doctoral students the opportunity of a Cotutelle-based doctorate and, thus, allows for obtaining doctoral degrees from both the Georg-August-University of Göttingen (UGOE) and Ilia State University (ISU) on the basis of only one single dissertation. In addition, the program is distinguished, above all, by the outstanding conditions for conducting research, writing the doctoral thesis and receiving further skills training. The participating doctoral students will not only spend a total of 12 months at the UGOE, but will also receive comprehensive support for participation in international conferences and their fieldwork activities. Due to the involvement of various scientific fields the LHIDP pays special attention to multi-disciplinarity and diversity and involves a great variety of institutes, chairs, professors and other teachers at both ISU and UGOE. The science fields represented in the LHIDP were carefully selected based on quality, suitability, compatibility of the participating researchers and potential for future scientific cooperation. These are in particular: Philology, History, Political Science, Religious and Cultural Studies, Development Economics, Ecology, Chemical Biology, Physics and Cosmology. The LHIDP furthermore includes a Young Researcher Grant designed to offer the opportunity of receiving funding for up to 11 months to high-potential, aspiring candidates who recently completed their doctorate and are seeking to pursue a career in academia. The LHIDP is generously funded by the German Volkswagen Foundation and the Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation of Georgia


Leitung: Anke Holler, Markus Steinbach (Koordinator: Vakhtang Pataridze)
Förderzeitraum: 2018-2024
Geldgeber: VolkswagenStiftung und Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation
Projektwebsite