Sabine Stoll gave talk at Neuroscience Center (U Geneva) on 'Language acquisition in maximally diverse languages'
Sabine Stoll gave a talk at the Neuroscience Center at the Unversity of Geneva on
'Language acquisition in maximally diverse languages', October 29, 2018.
Weitere News
- SNFS Grant for Karin Stüber
- Dagmar Jung to give a guest lecture in Toronto
- A visual stimulus for eliciting associated motion: paper by Marine Vuillermet
- State of the art on Source-Goal (a)symmetries across languages: paper by Marine Vuillermet and colleague
- Special issue on Source-Goal (a)symmetries across languages: edited by Marine Vuillermet and Anetta Kopecka
- Talk by Olivier Rüst on the acquisition of case systems: Host – case combinations are gradually generalized
- Talk by Arrate Isasi-Isasmendi on the role of case during scene apprehension for speaking
- Cross-linguistic patterns of morpheme order reflect cognitive biases: paper by Carmen Saldaña
- Talk on Ancient Greek participles by Florian Sommer
- Corpus-based phonetics: new paper by Bickel and colleagues
- Neural signatures of ergativity in speech planning: new paper by department members
- Rigvedische Komposita in der rekursiven Satzverknüpfung: new paper by Scarlata and Widmer
- New paper on linguistic phylogeography
- Balthasar Bickel talk in Jerusalem
- Dagmar Jung to give talk on doing remote fieldwork at the 2021 SSILA meeting
- New paper by Edgar Suter "The Asmat-Muli languages of southwestern New Guinea"
- New paper by Sebastian Sauppe: "Speaking for seeing: Sentence structure guides visual event apprehension"
- New paper by Chundra Cathcart "Disentangling dialects: a neural approach to Indo-Aryan historical phonology and subgrouping"
- New paper on historical German-Lithuanian language contact by Florian Sommer
- Chundra Cathcart, Andi Hölzl, Paul Widmer, Gerhard Jäger and Balthasar Bickel published the latest results from an SNSF project on Indo-Iranian noun phrases in Language Dynamics and Change
- Talk by Sabine Stoll on documenting language acquisition
- New paper by Piera Filippi on Emotional Voice Intonation and the Origins of Speech Processing and Word-Meaning Associations
- New Paper by Carmen Saldaña Gascon on learning biases in person-number linearization
- Call combinations in dwarf mongooses: department members combine linguistic and biological expertise in a new paper in Proc B
- Morphological structure can escape reduction effects from mass admixture of L2 speakers: new paper to appear in Studies in Language
- New Paper by Kellen Parker Van Dam
- New paper by Manuel Widmer
- New paper by Kellen Parker Van Dam
- Guanghao You is to present his work on "Processing causatives in first language acquisition A computational approach"
- Talk by Christian Ebert at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea
- Special feature on ‘Celebrating Linguistic Diversity’ in the latest Research*eu magazine presenting ERC research of the ACQDIV project from Sabine Stoll and her group.
- New open access paper from Vanessa Wilson on macaque gaze responses to a virtual monkey
- New paper from Vanessa Wilson on the facial Width-to-Height ratio in chimpanzees and links to age, sex and personality
- Vanessa Wilson gave an invited online talk in Moritz Daum's lab in Zürich's Psychology department
- Vanessa Wilson gave a talk at the annual NeuZü Meeting in Neuchatel
- Beta version of the Zurich online edition of the Atharvaveda Paippalāda online
- Andreas Hölzl to give an invited talk in Prague
- Arrate Isasi-Isasmendi gave talk at “Linguistic Consequences of Language Contact” Workshop
- Talk by Carmen Saldana on August 1st 9.20h EST at this year’s 42nd Annual Virtual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, within the session called “Comparative and Cultural Cognition”. Title: "Rational After All: Changes in Probability Matching Behaviour Across Time in Humans and Monkeys".
- Andreas Hölzl to give invited talk in Szeged
- "In search of isoglosses: continuous and discrete language embeddings in Slavic historical phonology" by Chundra Cathcart and Florian Wandl
- «NFS Evolving Language: ein nationaler Forschungsschwerpunkt zur Sprache» auf dem Blog der SAGW
- A bias towards category clustering: new Language paper by Mansfield, Stoll & Bickel
- «Reading Minds», Artikel über Balthasar Bickel im UZH Magazin 1/20
- «Die Gedanken wären dann nicht mehr frei», SRF 1 Echo der Zeit Podcast mit Balthasar Bickel
- «Können Computer bald unsere Gedanken lesen?» Tagesanzeiger Interview mit Balthasar Bickel und Anne-Lise Giraud zum NCCR Evolving Language
- «Gefährlich wie die Atombombe», Weltwoche Interview mit Balthasar Bickel und Anne-Lise Giraud zum NCCR Evolving Language
- New publication by Anna Jancso, Steven Moran, and Sabine Stoll on the ACQDIV Corpus Database.
- New paper from Mael Leroux and Simon Townsend on call combinations in great apes and the evolutionary origins of syntax
- Dagmar Jung receives 4-year grant to continue work with Dene
- Austroasiatic syntax in areal and diachronic perspective
- Interview with Balthasar Bickel on the NCCR Evolving Language
- First treebank of Vedic Sanskrit released
- Kellen van Dam gave talk at NEILS
- New publication by Steven Moran
- New publications by Yoko Yamazaki
- New publications by Natalia Chousou-Polydouri
- New publication by Steven Moran and Christian Chiarcos
- Merry Christmas!
- New publication by Florian Sommer
- New publication by Natalia Chousou-Polydouri
- NCCR "Evolving Language" approved
- TV report on Blasi et al. (2019)
- New publication by Andreas Hölzl
- Andreas Hölzl gave invited talk at Freie Universität Berlin
- New publication by IVS members Stefan Dedio and Paul Widmer in collaboration with Peter Ranacher in Language: Evidence for Britain and Ireland as a linguistic area
- Balthasar Bickel to give lecture and teach workshop at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima
- Yoko Yamazaki to give talk in Stockholm
- Steven Moran elected to board of eLinguistics Foundation
- New publication by Sascha Völlmin
- Svenja Bonmann gave talk in Cologne
- Sabine Stoll to give talks at Harvard and MIT
- Department members @ BUCLD, Boston
- Department member TP Dr. Carlotta Viti appointed full professor for Ancient Languages and Cultures at Beijing Normal University (Zhuhai Campus)!
- New co-authored publication by Dagmar Jung
- Florian Sommer gave a talk in Birštonas
- IVS at UZH Agreement Conference
- Welcome to Dr. Sakine Çabuk at IVS
- Andreas Hölzl to give invited talk at University of Munich
- New research from IVS members Sabrina Engesser and Simon Townsend, published in PNAS, sheds light on the building blocks of bird vocalisations
- Yoko Yamazaki to give talk at conference "Issues in Baltic Linguistics"
- Florian Sommer teaching at JeSSIE
- Mathias Jenny, Hiram Ring, Wei-Wei Lee and other members of the V1 project team are giving talks at the 8th ICAAL in Chiang Mai, August 29-31, 2019
- Bickel and Stoll to teach courses at Autumn School
- Welcome to new department members!
- IVS members at ALT 2019 (Pavia)
- IVS members at SLE 2019 (Leipzig)
- Article on Sabine Stoll’s research on comparative language development in Schweizer Familie
- Damián Blasi teaches a course in "Quantitative Typology" at a Winter School organized by the Department of Linguistics at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
- You & Mažara to present @ ICLC / Nishinomiya
- IVS @ Association for Computation Linguistics Conference!
- Jekaterina Mažara presented @ CogSci / Montreal
- New Publication by Jekaterina Mažara and Sabine Stoll
- New publication on speech planning in dialogue by Sebastian Sauppe
- IVS at ICHL 24 in Canberra
- Bickel gave a keynote on morphological dependencies at Surrey
- Keynote by Sabrina Engesser at the University of Tokyo
- New publications by Mathias Jenny
- Stefan Dedio, Paul Widmer and Peter Ranacher (Geography Department UZH) developed a method for quantifying area formation processes.
- Keynote by Sabrina Engesser at ENS Paris
- IG-Arbeitstagung Ljubljana: Talks by Florian Sommer and Yoko Yamazaki
- Hiram Ring, Mathias Jenny, Wei-Wei Lee and Rachel Weymuth to present at SEALS
- Sonja Schnabel successfully defended her PhD
- Chundra Cathcart to give talk at Bayes@Lund
- New publication by Steven Moran
- Johanna Nichols to give talk at UZH on 24 April 2019, 14.00h
- Manuel Widmer to give talk in Vienna
- Mathias Jenny to teach workshop at the Yangon University of Foreign Languages
- Wei-Wei Lee and Rachel Weymuth gave talk in Helsinki
- Steven Moran to give co-authored presentation in Helsinki
- Newly advertised research positions at the Department of Comparative Linguistics
- An article by Nick Lester entitled, "That's hard: Relativizer use in spontaneous L2 speech" was just published in the International Journal of Learner Corpus Research.
- Publication in Science by author team including Damián Blasi, Steven Moran, Paul Widmer, and Balthasar Bickel
- Steven Moran and Daniel McCloy (eds.) publish PHOIBLE 2.0 database (phoible.org)
- Mathias Jenny, Hiram Ring, and André Müller to give talks at the AAS, Denver
- Co-authored publication by Chundra Cathcart selected for inclusion in "The Best of Language: Volume III"
- New volume on grammatical relations by Bickel and Witzlack-Makarevich
- Bickel joins editorial board of the Journal of Linguistics
- Nick Lester invited to teach courses at summer school
- Manuel Widmer gave invited talk in Tübingen
- Mathias Jenny to give two invited talks at the University of Yangon
- Department features at 32nd CUNY Human Sentence Processing conference with three posters
- Dagmar Jung presented her paper 'How to negate in Dene Suline' at SSILA/LSA
- New paper by Florian Sommer on the morphology of definiteness marking in Baltic (open access)
- Francesco Gardani to give talk at the 29th Congrès international de linguistique et philologie romanes in Copenhagen
- Francesco Gardani to give talk at ICHL24 in Canberra
- Florian Sommer defended PhD thesis
- Manuel Widmer to give presentation in Brussels
- Paul Widmer published paper on Tocharian
- Rik van Gijn receives ERC Consolidator grant
- The SNSF awards a 4-year SINERGIA grant “Out of Asia: Linguistic Diversity and Population History” to a consortium of GIScientists, geneticists and linguists, including IVS members Paul Widmer and Balthasar Bickel. The project will start next year.
- The Department of Comparative Linguistics, University of Zurich, has signed an MoU with the Department of Linguistics, Yangon University of Foreign Languages, Myanmar.
- Master's program Evolutionary Linguistics approved by the Executive Board of the University of Zürich
- Steven Moran and Antonio Benítez-Burraco publish free Ebook "The Adaptive Value of Languages: Non-Linguistic Causes of Language Diversity"
- Steven Moran and Sabine Stoll presented their paper 'Variation sets in maximally diverse languages' at BUCLD
- New paper: "Sanskrit Word Segmentation Using Character-level Recurrent and Convolutional Neural Networks". Authors: Oliver Hellwig and Sebastian Nehrdich (Hamburg)
- Manuel Widmer to give talk in Pavia
- New paper from Stuart Watson and Simon Townsend on the information content of wolf howls
- Michele Loporcaro, Francesco Gardani, and Alberto Giudici to give talk at Going Romance in Utrecht
- New paper by Francesco Gardani in Language and Linguistics Compass
- New SNSF grant on ergativity
- Francesco Gardani was elected member of the Executive Committee of the Societas Linguistica Europaea
- Damián Blasi taught a course on data science at NTNU
- Steven Moran and colleague published editorial "The Adaptive Value of Languages: Non-Linguistic Causes of Language Diversity" as part of their edited volume in Frontiers in Psychology
- New publications by Andreas Hölzl 2018
- Andreas Hölzl and colleague organized workshop on Tungusic language family at SLE51
- Pied babbler paper makes Editor’s Choice in Behavioral Ecology
- Sabine Stoll to give two talks at WEF Meeting of New Champions in Tianjin, China
- Paul Widmer gives talk at workshop in Lausanne co-organized by groups from the Sorbonne, UMR Orient & Mediterranée, U Lausanne, and IVS
- Steven Moran and colleagues organized workshop at SLE51
- Steven Moran, Sebastian Sauppe, Nicholas Lester and Sabine Stoll presented at SLE51
- Fieldwork activities and workshops at YUFL in connection with Mathias Jenny's project on Burmese TV
- New paper on the drivers of linguistic diversity in Proc Roy Soc B by Bickel and colleagues
- New paper on the evolution of syntax by department members in PLoS Biology
- Mathias Jenny giving talk at the 13th International Burma Studies Conference in Bangkok
- Bickel gives keynote at a conference on «Morphosyntactic Misfits»
- Steven Moran interviewed for the Language Science Press blog
- Steven Moran and Michael Cysouw have published open source book "The Unicode Cookbook for linguists: Managing writing systems using orthography profiles"
- New paper on 'Meaning-refining acoustic variation in pied babbler recruitment cries' by Sabrina Engesser, Simon Townsend, et al.
- Bickel to give a plenary at the conference “Typology and Universals in Word Formation IV”
- Mathias Jenny, Hiram Ring and Wei-Wei Lee to teach "Basics of field methods" at Yangon University of Foreign Languages and University of Mandalay (Myanmar)
- The Swiss Paippalāda Project to hold workshop in Zurich on 21/22 June 2018
- Chundra Cathcart to present paper at 34th South Asian Languages Analysis Roundtable, June 21, in Konstanz, Germany
- Thomas Zehnder hält einen Gastvortrag auf der Indologie der Uni Tübingen
- Hiram Ring and Mathias Jenny gave a talk titled "Toward reconstruction of Austroasiatic syntax" at the 28th SEALS conference in Kaohsiung, Taiwan on May 17, 2018
- Nouns slow down speech: newly discovered universal of language processing published by Bickel and colleagues in PNAS
- Steven Moran to present three co-authored papers at 11th Edition of Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC) in Miyazaki, Japan
- Francesco Gardani to deliver plenary talk at the 13th Cambridge Italian Dialect Syntax-Morphology Meeting
- Francesco Gardani gave a talk on “Verb aspect borrowing in Istro-Romanian” at Stony Brook University
- The following papers by Chundra Cathcart appeared:
- Several department members to present at 12th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (EVOLANG) in Torun, Poland
- Florian Sommer and Paul Widmer give keynote at "A corpus and usage-based approach to Ancient Greek: from the Archaic period until the Koiné"
- Sabine Stoll talks about Citizen Science in Linguistics
- Thematic issue edited by Katarzyna Janic et al. published
- Manuel Widmer interviewed by SRF on occasion of the International Mother Language Day
- Mathias Jenny to give invited talk Yangon University of Foreign Languages (YUFL)
- New project and two new colleagues at the IVS
- New publication co-authored by Paul Widmer on clause linkage in Middle Welsh
- Mathias Jenny organizes panel on "Changing Environments: Language and Society in Myanmar"
- New publication by Stefan Dedio and Paul Widmer on Old and Middle Irish
- Bickel, Stoll and Gardani lecturing at COEDL
- Bickel to give plenary at ALS Anniversary Conference
- Talks by department members at ALS
- Several talks by IVS members at ALT
- Mathias Jenny to give talk on "Verb initial structures as an archaic feature of Austroasiatic" at the ALT conference
- Mathias Jenny to give talk titled "In search of Austroasiatic - word order and clause structure" at University of Potsdam
- Sebastian Sauppe and Rik van Gijn receive funding for pilot project
- New publication by Paul Widmer on Tocharian
- National Geographic Explorer grant awarded to Sebastian Sauppe
- New paper by Sebastian Sauppe on German sentence production
- New research project sponsored by SNSF
- New book by Manuel Widmer
- DAI workshop to take place on 9 October 2017
- Vorträge von Mitgliedern des IVS auf dem "33. Deutschen Orientalistentag, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena"
- Stefan Dedio, Francesco Gardani, Peter Ranacher, Paul Widmer gave two talks at the workshop "New Approaches to Brittonic historical Linguistics"
- 5'000 books into the NEBIS catalog until 31st August 2017
- “Borrowed Morphology”, edited by Francesco Gardani, Peter Arkadiev & Nino Amiridze, goes paperback
- Damián Blasi gave an invited talk at "Statistics of language: therories and experiments"
- New publication by Francesco Gardani
- Stefan Dedio, Manuel Widmer and Paul Widmer to give talks at the 23rd International Conference on Historical Linguistics in San Antonio, Texas
- New publication by Manuel Widmer & Marius Zemp
- New paper from Simon Townsend on the dwarf mongoose alarm call system
- New paper from Sabrina Engesser and Simon Townsend on pied babbler call combinations
- Balthasar Bickel to give talk on the scope of evolutionary biases in language
- Charlotte Schweri defended PhD thesis
- New publication by Mathias Jenny
- Bickel to give a talk at an MPI Nijmegen workshop on new questions and methods in linguistics.
- Mathias Jenny to teach introductory courses in linguistics as visiting lecturer at the University of Mawlamyine, Myanmar.
- Talk by Bob Ladd and Stephan Schmid at PaPE
- Talks by Alys Boote Cooper and André Müller at the Chulalongkorn International Student Symposium on Southeast Asian Linguistics
- Mathias Jenny, Alys Boote Cooper & Paul Widmer gave talk at conference "Contact-driven multilingual practices"
- Talk by Stephan Schmid at ICLaVE 9
- AUTOTYP database released!
- Steven Moran gave a talk at the 25th Manchester Phonology Meeting
- Talk by Florian Sommer in Halle
- Stephan Schmid co-author of new paper on speech perception
- Damián Blasi gave invited talk at ENS
- New professor at the department: Welcome to Simon Townsend!
- New publication by Bickel on linguistic areas and universals
- Bickel and Derungs at Monte Verità Conference on Spatial Boundaries and Transitions
- Keynote by Damián Blasi at Paris-Sorbonne
- Florian Sommer giving invited talk in Bern
- IDG new paper
- Am 20. und 21. April halten mehrere Mitglieder des IVS Vorträge auf dem 3. Indogermanistischen Forschungskolloquium in Wien
- Library network 'Bibliotheksverbund Platte' launched! Improved opening hours (Mon-Fri, 9-17) and facilities for students and staff
- Inaugural talk by Mathias Jenny on "Southeast Asian linguistic landscapes - unity in diversity", April 3, 2017, 18:15.
- New publication by Paul Widmer on argument selection and the morphosyntax of the Breton and Brittonic verbal complex
- Stefan Dedio, Paul Widmer to present workshop paper at 23rd International Symposium on Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (Thessaloniki)
- Phonetic variation in contemporary Spanish
- An article with the title "How Society Shapes Language: Personal Pronouns in the Greater Burma Zone" by André Müller and Rachel Weymuth has recently been published in "Asiatische Studien - Éudes Asiatiques" (Volume 71, Issue 1).
- Balthasar Bickel to give keynote at Conference on Phylogenetics Methods
- Language and Migration
- Balthasar Bickel in the UZH Magazin
- Rik van Gijn gives inaugural lecture
- PAZ in the Press The Ticinese newspaper “Giornale del Popolo“ published a full paper report in its weekend issue of the 25th of February on the latest publication of the Phonogram Archives
- Mathias Jenny, Volker Dellwo, Paul Widmer to present their research at Mandalay University, Myanmar
- Workshop „Linguistic diversity meets the brain“ to be held at IVS, 15-17 May 2017
- Recursion in language evolution: new paper by IVS team accepted by "Language”
- Stephan Schmid to present at AISV in Pisa
- Upcoming workshop on diachronic morphology (DIAMOR) organized by IVS members
- Michele Loporcaro and Francesco Gardani editors-in-chief of the new Oxford encyclopedia of Romance linguistics
- Sebastian Sauppe published a paper on the timing of turn-taking in dialogue
- SLE accepts all 5 workshops proposed by IVS departent members
- Damián Blasi gives invited talk at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany
- Bickel, Moran and Blasi give talks at workshop on genetics and animal vocal communication / human language
- Damian Blasi held an invited talk at TedLab at MIT
- Damian Blasi held a Plenary talk at the Colloquium "The Grammar of Body Parts" at the PUCP in Lima, Perú
- Damian Blasi held a course on Phylogenetic Methods at the PUCP in Lima, Perú
- New edited volume on switch reference by Rik van Gijn and Jeremy Hammond
- Paper by Damian Blasi et al is reported on in Nature
- New department member: Yingqi Jing
- Camilla Bernardasci and Stephan Schmid publish two new research articles in Studi AISV.
- New publication by the Greater Burma Zone team:
- Phoneticians in Munich
- On 27 October 2016, Camilla Bernardasci presents the new publication of the Phonogram Archives: "Stòri, stralüsc e stremizzi. Registrazioni dialettali nella Svizzera italiana“
- 4 new SNSF grants (100% success rate!) at IVS
- Three new department members: Katarzyna Janic, Tim Aufderheide, and Urban Zihlmann
- Balthasar Bickel and Taras Zakharko present new design principle for typological databases at PLM 2016
- Damián Blasi and colleagues published a paper in PNAS: "Sound–meaning association biases evidenced across thousands of languages".
- Florian Sommer and Paul Widmer to give presentations at the conference “Back to the Root - The Structure, Function, and Semantics of the PIE Root” (15. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft) in Vienna.
- Balthasar Bickel to give invited talk at Europen Summer School Workshop on Optional and Differential Case Marking
- Lithuanian-Swiss cooperation programme workshop in Zurich
- New encyclopedia entry on linguistic areas by Rik van Gijn and Pieter Muysken
- Patrick McCormick held a talk on September 5th 2016 at the University of Chiang Mai
- Mathias Jenny and Paul Widmer to present papers at ICAAL workshop "Austroasiatic Syntax in Areal and Diachronic Perspective" in Chiang Mai.
- IVS members teaching at Porquerolles
- Stoll and Bickel contribute to a paper on intentionality in animal communication
- Dieter Studer-Joho and Adrian Leeman dialect experts on sf1 Einstein (25.08.16)
- Big show of the department at SLE 2016
- New paper on the role of prosody and word length in Middle Breton versification by Paul Widmer
- Steve Moran gives talk "Quantitative Analysis of Dogon" at the Mini African Symposium at MPI for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany.
- Just out! The brand new Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages
- Damián Blasi co-authored a paper on a large cultural, linguistic and ecological database D-Place
- Romance linguists in Rome: Camilla Bernardasci, Stefano Negrinelli, Diego Pescarini, Serena Romagnoli and Stephan Schmid to present at
- Damián Blasi co-authored a paper on a large cultural, linguistic and ecological database D-Place
- Mathias Jenny is teaching a course on "Introduction to linguistics and linguistic fieldwork for anthropologists" at the Mandalay University, Myanmar, August 1-12, 2016.
- Mathias Jenny and Paul Sidwell, in cooperation with the Myanmar Center, Chiang Mai University, are organizing a workshop on "Austroasiatic syntax in areal and diachronic perspective" at Chiang Mai University, Thailand, September 5-7, 2016.
- Balthasar Bickel elected President of the Linguistic Society of Switzerland and member of the Academia Europaea
- Several members of the IVS are giving talks at the 9th Days of Swiss Linguistics in Geneva on June 29 to July 1, 2016
- André Müller to give a talk titled "Mehrsprachigkeit bei den Kachin: wer spricht eigentlich was?"
- Mathias Jenny to give a talk titled "Sprachkontakt in Myanmar - die Rolle peripherer Sprachen und Völker"
- Balthasar Bickel to give a guest lecture in Mainz
- New paper by Karnthida Kerdpol
- Damián Blasi to give talk "What quantitative methods can do for the study of cross-linguistic patterns" at U Leipzig on 22 June 2016.
- New paper by Bickel & Zúñiga in press on what a 'word' might be (or not!) in polysynthetic languages.
- Per Baumann defended PhD thesis
- Steven Moran and colleagues to present the paper, "The Open Linguistics Working Group: Developing the Linguistic Linked Open Data Cloud", at the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2016)
- Steven Moran, Robert Schikowski, Danica Pajović, Cazim Hysi and Sabine Stoll to present the paper "The ACQDIV Database: Min(d)ing the Ambient Language" at the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2016)
- Stephan Schmid gives lecture on Swiss-German Ethnolects at Université de Fribourg, 20.05.2016
- New publication on Hittite by Paul Widmer and Florian Sommer
- Marie-José Kolly presented a poster on intercoder reliability at r-atics 5
- Mathias Jenny and Patrick McCormick to give talks on "Verb-initial word order in Austroasiatic" and "Mainland Southeast Asia as a linguistic area" at the 26th SEALS conference in Manila
- Introduction to Old Prussian
- Stephan Schmid invited participant in workshop on the Spanish-speaking community in Switzerland at the University of Lausanne
- Sabine Stoll to give a talk on April 20 at the Institute of Neuroinformatics (UZH) on 'Universal principles in language acquisition: a new crosslinguistic approach’.
- Stephan Schmid invited participant at workshop on „Dialect Acquisition and Migration“ in Oslo
- Paul Widmer, Michiel de Vaan and Florian Sommer gave talks at the workshop "Historical and typological approaches to Baltic morphosyntax" in Vilnius.
- Mathias Jenny to give a talk on "Word order in Austroasiatic - what about verb-initial?" at the Christian Albrechts University, Kiel, on April 14, 2016
- Paul Widmer co-authors a talk by Erich Poppe: “Middle Welsh Verbal Nouns and their Constructions. Some Variables for Classification”
- New paper on hierarchical agreement and co-argument sensitivity by Bickel and colleagues
- Patrick McCormick to give three talks in Seattle, WA (USA)
- Manuel Widmer to give a talk at the workshop "The development of argument-marking systems" in Nijmegen, March 31 – April 1
- New publication co-authored by Paul Widmer and Jürg Fleischer (Marburg) on gender, agreement, and agreement morphology in Old and Modern Frisian
- New D-A-CH grant on the Typology of Vowel and Consonant Quantity in Southern German varieties
- Damián Blasi to give talk at Santa Fe Institute
- Manuel Widmer to give a talk at the Symposium on evidentiality, egophoricity and engagement in Stockholm
- Presentation at EVOLANG on animal syntax
- Marie-José Kolly successfully defended her PhD thesis on „The influence of speaker origin and individuality on rhythmic features of non-native speech“
- Mathias Jenny, Patrick McCormick, André Müller and Rachel Weymuth to give talks in panel "Rethinking the relationship between language and identity in Burma and beyond" (convenor: Patrick McCormick)
- Michele Loporcaro and Stephan Schmid invited speakers at workshop on sound change in Salamanca
- New publication by Mathias Jenny and San San Hnin Tun
- Linguistics and Genetics Workshop in March
- Commentary published in the Journal of Language Evolution by Steven Moran
- New paper by Damián Blasi and colleagues in the Journal of Language Evolution
- New article by Jekaterina Mazara & Sabine Stoll
- Two new projects launched: Processing of Ergativity and Morphology in Time and Space
- New department members: Sebastian Sauppe, Michèle Kolačková and Stefan Dedio
- Successful habilitation by Mathias Jenny
- New paper by Stephan Schmid on the borrowability of bound morphemes in language contact
- New paper by Bickel and colleagues on hierarchical alignment
- Stephan Schmid to give presentation on "VOT in L2 German“
- Stephan Schmid to give presentation on „Differenzierungsprozesse im Sprachgebrauch von Jugendlichen in der Deutschschweiz“ at the Colloque VALS-ASLA 2016 in Geneva
- Successful habilitation by Rik Van Gijn
- New publication by Leemann, Kolly, Purves, Britain, and Glaser on using smartphone apps for crowdsourcing language change
- New paper by Balthasar Bickel on large and ancient linguistic areas
- Phonogram Archives on the Radio
- Guest: Penny Brown
- Guests: Shanley Allen and Mary Elliott
- Special issue of Linguistic Discovery and two papers by Rik van Gijn
- Florian Sommer and Paul Widmer are granted funds by the Lietuvos Mokslo Taryba (Lithuanian Research Council)
- Daniel Friedrichs to give invited talks at University of Cambridge and UCL Speech Science Forum
- Damiàn Blasi gave talk in Cambridge at the Department of Phonetics
- Publication by Adrian Leemann and Marie-José Kolly on the effect of dialect imitation on speech rhythm
- New book edited by Adrian Leemann, Marie-José Kolly, Stephan Schmid & Volker Dellwo
- Patrick McCormick to give talk on “A Mon past for a modern nation: writing a minority history into and out of Burma" at St Anthony's College and SOAS
- Mathias Jenny receives ETH Global seed money for cooperation in research and teaching with Mandalay University (Myanmar)
- Florian Sommer and Paul Widmer to give presentations at the 12th International Congress of Balticists in Vilnius
- Balthasar Bickel to give keynote talk at conference on phylogenetic algorithms in linguistics
- 27.10.2015 UNESCO World Day of Audiovisual Heritage: "Geschichten aus dem Dorfleben von Diepoldsau"
- Programme workshop Inheritance Hierarchies in Morphology online
- New publication by Rik van Gijn and colleagues on subordination strategies in Tupian languages
- Sandra Auderset and Manuel Widmer at Transalpine Typology Meeting in Lyon
- Damián Blasi, Steven Moran, and Sabine Stoll present at CRNS in Lyon
- Paul Widmer to give keynote at Arbeitstagung "100 Jahre Entzifferung des Hethitischen"
- Florian Sommer to present paper at European Conference of Iranian Studies
- New publication on Chintang by Robert Schikowski, Netra P. Paudyal, and Balthasar Bickel
- IVS at Scientifica
- New (temporary) help in our administration
- Damian Blasi, Manuel Widmer, Piar Karim, and Jekaterina Mažara to join our scientific staff
- 5 talks by department members at SLE 2015
- Bickel and colleages to give talk on orangutan communication
- Balthasar Bickel to give plenary at Sino-Tibetan conference
- New paper by Bickel and colleages on how the brain shapes grammar
- 10-14 August 2015: Phoneticians in Glasgow
- Workshop on inheritance hierarchies in morphology
- André Müller and Rachel Weymuth to give a talk
- Mathias Jenny to give a talk 6th International Conference on Austroasiatic Languages
- Mathias Jenny to give a talk at International Conference on Burma/Myanmar Studies
- New paper by Daniel Friedrichs and colleagues
- New paper on evolutionary trends in agreement system by Balthasar Bickel and colleagues
- New publication by Rik van Gijn
- New publication by Rik van Gijn
- ACQDIV kickoff workshop a success
- Edisyn VIII co-organized by Florian Sommer and Dieter Studer-Joho
- New publication by Paul Widmer
- Two talks in Sweden by Sabine Stoll
- Talk on reusing corpora by Robert Schikowski and Steven Moran
- New publication by Paul Widmer together with Jürg Fleischer and Elisabeth Rieken
- Mathias Jenny to give four talks at CRLAO/EHESS
- Balthasar Bickel to give guest lecture at U Stockholm
- Steven Moran and colleagues publish new online database 'Tsammalex'
- André Müller to give talk at SEALS
- Mathias Jenny to give talk at SEALS
- Balthasar Bickel to give talk at an interdisciplinary workshop on nativism in Edinburgh
- Interdisciplinary Workshop on Vocal Accomodation
- Paul Widmer and Florian Sommer to give a talk at the meeting of the Editing Avestan network in Berlin
- New SNF Grant on the Processing of Ergative Structures
- New publication by Mathias Jenny: "Syntactic diversity and change in Austroasiatic languages"
- Steven Moran presenting with Garland McNew "Visualizing WALS (and other) data"
- Seven members of the department to give talks at conference on linguistic diversity
- Research of the ERC Project ACQDIV on Aboriginal TV in Canada
- New project awarded by the SNF to Michele Loporcaro and Sabine Stoll
- Volker Dellwo on SRF "Kulturplatz Schweiz“
- Bickel to give invited talk at conference on causality in the language sciences
- New publication by Mathias Jenny
- Conference on Indo-European linguistics in Erlangen co-organized by Florian Sommer
- Mathias Jenny is to give a talk as invited speaker at the "Seminar on Language and Dialect Continuum in Myanmar"
- Dagmar Jung and Steve Moran will present a talk on "Documenting typological diversity for real: the need of language acquisition studies"
- Sprachgeschichte, in Schellack gepresst
- ZüKL-Podcast on speech rhythm with Stephan Schmid
- New paper by Stoll and colleagues on syntactic mixing
- New paper by Volker Dellwo and colleagues
- New paper co-authored by Volker Dellwo
- New paper by Volker Dellwo and colleagues
- Volker Dellwo will give a talk on "Can we identify speakers based on their rhythm?"
- Mathias Jenny is to give a talk on "Structural divergence in Burmese varieties"
- Stephan Schmid and Camilla Bernardasci to present at AISV 2015
- 'Voice Äpp' by the UZH Phonetics Lab launched
- New paper co-authored by Paul Widmer on syntactic ambiguity in Middle Welsh
- New paper co-authored by Rik van Gijn on approaches to linguistic areas
- The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages edited by Mathias Jenny & Paul Sidwell published
- New paper by Salvatore Scarlata and Paul Widmer accepted for publication
- New paper challeinging the universality of referential hierarchies by Balthasar Bickel and colleagues
- New articles by Paul Widmer and Florian Sommer published
- Dr. Dr. Ilya S. Yakubovich to visit the Indo-European Studies
- Balthasar Bickel and Sabine Stoll to visit the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
- Sabine Stoll to give guest lecture at MPI for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen
- New paper on reduplication in Yurakaré by Rik van Gijn
- New paper co-authored by Florian Sommer
- New chapter on complexity by Steven Moran and Damián Blasi
- Jeffrey Heath visiting
- New book on phonological typology
- CfP workshop co-organized by Rik van Gijn
- New publication co-authored by Rik van Gijn
- Mathias Jenny, Patrick McCormick & André Müller will give a talk on "Tracing Patterns of Contact and Movement in the Greater Burma Zone"
- Sabine Stoll to present her research at SNF Tour de Suisse
- Research of Sabine Stoll on comparative language acquisition featured in the UZH magazine
- New publication by Rik van Gijn in Morphology
- New paper on the areal development of antipassives as first person object markers in the Himalays accepted for publication
- New paper on areas and universals by Balthasar Bickel accepted for publication
- New handbook chapter on language universals by Balthasar Bickel
- PHOIBLE by Steven Moran et al. released
- Department members to give talks at the IDG conference in Paris
- Workshop on "Partitivity in Romance and beyond" organised by Giorgio Iemmolo funded by SNF
- Department members give talks at the SLE conference in Poznań
- ACQDIV takes off
- Giorgio Iemmolo at SWL6 in Pavia, Italy
- Sabine Stoll appointed professor; starts ERC project
- Elena Lieven is visiting the Psycholinguistics Laboratory
- New publication: "Transitivity and affectedness in Mon" written by Dr. Mathias Jenny
- The paper "Speaker-individuality in Fujisaki model f0 features: implications for forensic voice comparison" was accepted by the International Journal of Speech Language and the Law
- Newar course
- The paper "The influence of speaking rate on Fujisaki model parameters" was accepted by the EURASIP Journal
- Emily Bender visiting
- Paul Widmer and Florian Sommer will give a talk at the Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main
- Mathias Jenny to give plenary talk on Myanmar and Thailand
- Matilde Vida Castro is visiting the Phonetics Laboratory
- Johanna Nichols visiting
- New publication on language evolution
- 8th Days of Swiss Linguistics at UZH
- Paul Sidwell visiting
- Balthasar Bickel to give talk at the MPI for Psycholinguistics
- Department of Comparative Linguistics to celebrate its foundation
- Volker Dellwo and Stephan Schmid at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Madrid)
- Balthasar Bickel invited speaker at a conference on “Linguistic Microareas in South Asia”
- Stephan Schmid gives talk in Spain
- Sabine Stoll’s ERC project featured in the UZH News
- Giorgio Iemmolo invited speaker at the Conference "The diachronic typology of differential case marking"
- Visit by Noun-To-Verb-Ratio (NTVR) project team
- New book on South American languages with three papers by Rik van Gijn
- Special issue of 'Linguistics' edited by Giorgio Iemmolo
- Diana Schackow defended PhD thesis
- Mark Aronoff visiting our institute
- Harald Hammerström visiting our institute
- Robert Forkel visiting our institute
- New book co-edited by Rik van Gijn
- New publication by Leemann, Kolly, Werlen, Britain and Studer-Joho
- Balthasar Bickel to give plenary talk
- Article by Adrian Leemann, Volker Dellwo and Marie-José Kolly to be published in Forensic Science International
- Paper by Leemann, Dellwo, Kolly and Schmid at Speech Prosody 2014
- Paper by Leemann, Kolly and Dellwo at Speech Prosody 2014
- Talks by members of the department in New Delhi, India, February 17-19
- New paper by Roland Litscher published
- New paper by Marie-José Kolly and Volker Dellwo published
- New paper by Balthasar Bickel and colleagues accepted for publication
- Paul Widmer named professor of Comparative Indo-European Studies
- Sabine Stoll receives prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant
- Steven Moran giving talk at Dynamique du language (CRNS)
- Article by Sabine Stoll and Balthasar Bickel published
- Article by Sabine Stoll and Elena Lieven published
- Article by Sabine Stoll and Balthasar Bickel published
- Article by Sabine Stoll and Edith Bavin published
- Article by Mathias Jenny and San San Hnin Tun published
- New book co-edited by Sabine Stoll on acquisition of ergativity
- New book co-edited by Balthasar Bickel released
- Steven Moran giving talk at University of Stockholm
- Article by Giorgio Iemmolo in STUF – Language Typology and Universals
- Prof. Dr. Michele Loporcaro affiliated to General Linguistics
- New book co-edited by Sabine Stoll on acquisition of ergativity
- Kaius Sinnemäki visiting our institute
- Paul Sidwell visiting our institute
- Inter-university meeting on the Akan language
- Giorgio Iemmolo to give invited talk at the University of Leuven
- Robert Schikowski and Balthasar Bickel publish valency dictionary of Chintang
- Philippe Maurer co-publishes Atlas of Pidigin and Creole Languages
- Sabine Stoll to give talk at Freiburg workshop on language documentation
- Sabine Stoll to give guest lecture at University of Basel
- A new linguistic institute
- CfP workshop co-organized by Rik van Gijn on morphological complexity
- Tanja Samardžić and Hanna Ruch moving in
- Mathias Jenny receives a 3-year project grant from SNF
- Article by Bickel, Iemmolo, Zakharko, and Witzlack-Makarevich published
- Article by Steven Moran published
- Peter Trudgill visiting
- Rik van Gijn to give a talk at Meronym conference Mexico City
- Giorgio Iemmolo to give a talk at EACL8 in Paris
- Balthasar Bickel to give talk at 'The Cognitive Revolution 60 Years On'
- Two talks by members of the Department of General Linguistics at the 46th Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Split
- Giorgio Iemmolo and Rik van Gijn co-convenors of workshops at the 46th Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Split
- Steven Moran to present two papers at 2nd Workshop on Linked Data in Linguistics in Pisa
- Sabine Stoll to give talk at conference 'From Hand to Mouth' in Zürich
- Balthasar Bickel to give talk at conference 'From Hand to Mouth' in Zürich
- Mathias Jenny to give talk at ICAAL 5 in Canberra
- Steven Moran at the 44th Poznań Linguistic Meeting
- Steven Moran to give talk at CALL in Leiden
- Zwei studentische Assistenzen gesucht
- Balthasar Bickel to give talk at Scientifica 2013
- General Linguistics at Scientifica 2013
- Steven Moran at ACL 2013 in Sofia
- Talks by members of the Department of General Linguistics at ALT10 in Leipzig
- Volker Dellwo, Agnes Kolmer, and Richard Wiese to host workshop at the 19th International Congress of Linguists in Geneva
- Tobias Weber to give talk at the 19th International Congress of Linguists in Geneva
- Sabine Stoll and Chintang Project in UZH News
- Steven Moran at Language Diversity Congress in Groningen
- Talk by Mathias Jenny at Chiangmai University
- Steven Moran and Jelena Prokic giving talk at the LIPP symposium on endangered languages
- New website on distributional typology launched
- Katharina Haude visiting our institute
- Mathias Jenny, Volker Dellwo, and Rachel Weymuth on YouTube
- Talk by Sabine Stoll at conference "Language Documentation"
- Article by Sabine Stoll in supplement of 'Spektrum der Wissenschaft'
- Workshop held by Volker Dellwo, Mathias Jenny, and Rachel Weymuth
- Keynote talk by Balthasar Bickel at conference "Language Documentation"
- Alena Witzlack-Makarevich receives honourable mention
- Workshop on "Landscape through the prism of language"
- Transalpine Typology Meeting
- Giorgio Iemmolo and Robert Schikowski at CASTL in Tromsø
- Taras Zakharko to give talk at ZAS in Berlin
- Three talks by members of the seminar at 23rd SEALS conference in Bankok
- Plenary talk by Mathias Jenny at the 23rd SEALS conference in Bangkok
- Alena Witzlack-Makarevich appointed junior professorship in Kiel
- Talk by Bill Foley
- Talk by Greville Corbett
- Talk by Katharina Haude
- Balthasar Bickel to give two talks at Charles University in Prague
- Sabine Stoll to give two talks at Charles University in Prague
- Taras Zakharko at the workshop on "Current Tendencies and Potentials in Language Documentation" in Campinas, Brazil
- Inventory of linguistic journals now available on the department library's homepage
- Interview with Volker Dellwo published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
- "Dialäkt Äpp" by Mary-José Kolly and Adrian Leemann released
- Studentische Assistenz gesucht
- Ingrid Hove joins the department
- Giorgio Iemmolo and Alena Witzlack-Makarevich receive GRC for a workshop on landscape and language
- Workshop on Switch Reference organised by Rik van Gijn at next SLE
- Balthasar Bickel on the editorial board of “Journal of Linguistic Geography”
- Steven Moran co-author on a paper being presented at CUNY
- Publication by Steven Moran et al. in 'Language'
- Workshop organised by Giorgio Iemmolo at next SLE
- Steve Moran to present at "Workshop on Quantitative Approaches to Areal Typology"
- Giorgio Iemmolo in Konstanz
- Talk by Paul Sidwell on "The Proto-Austroasiatic lexicon project"
- Talk by Seppo Kittilä on "Evidentiality in Finnish"
- Balthasar Bickel invited speaker at the KNAW Conference "Patterns of Diversification and Contact: a Global Perspective"
- Talk by Frank Zimmerer on "What massive reductions (do not) tell us"
- Mathias Jenny at the workshop on Mainland Southeast Asian Languages in Leipzig
- Steve Moran at the workshop on "Phylomemetic and Phylogenetic Approaches in the Humanities" in Bern
- Talk by Philippe Maurer on Portuguese-based creoles
- Giorgio Iemmolo at the workshop on "Clitics in Old Italian" in Pavia
- Two guest lectures by Nikolaus Himmelmann
- Balthasar Bickel at the workshop on "Phylomemetic and phylogenetic approaches in the humanities" in Bern
- Talk by Balthasar Bickel on linguistic diversity
- Giorgio Iemmolo awarded International Short Visit Grant from the SNF
- Workshop on simulation models for language change
- Steven Moran has joined the department
- Mathias Jenny to present a paper at the International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics
- Mathias Jenny presents a paper on Mon at the Austroasiatic workshop in Singapore
- Adrian Leemann, Volker Dellwo and Marie-José Kolly at Phonetik and Phonology 8 in Jena
- Fernando Zúñiga on Balckfoot in the UZH magazine
- Mathias Jenny to present a paper at Syntax of the World's Lanugages V in Dubrovnik
- Talk by Mathias Jenny on language contact and syntactic change in Zürich
- Keynote talk on diachronic universals of agreement systems by Balthasar Bickel
- Alena Witzlack-Makarevich, Giorgio Iemmolo, Taras Zakharko and Balthasar Bickel to present a paper at Syntax of the World's Languages V
- Fernando Zúñiga to present a paper at Syntax of the World's Languages V
- Tobias Weber to present a paper at Syntax of the World's Languages V
- Tobias weber to present a paper on indirect diachronic explanations in typology
- Robert Schikowski to present a paper at Syntax of the World's Languages V
- National Science Foundation grant awarded
- Volker Dellwo, Adrian Leemann and Marie-José Kolly to present paper on speaker identification
- Adrian Leemann and Marie-José Kolly to present paper on the smartphone app "Dialäkt Äpp"
- Marie-José Kolly and Volker Dellwo to present paper on speech rhythm in foreign accents
- Adrian Leemann and Marie-José Kolly to present paper on /l/-vocalization in Swiss German
- Postdoctoral research position
- Sabine Stoll and Balthasar Bickel to present a paper at the workshop "Unpacking intentional communication in animals" in Zürich
- Taras Zakharko and Balthasar Bickel to present a paper at SLE 2012 in Stockholm
- Tobias Weber to present paper at SLE 2012 in Stockholm
- Mathias Jenny to present a paper at the SLE conference in Stockholm
- Alena Witzlack-Makarevich, Balthasar Bickel and Fernando Zúñiga at SLE 2012
- Giorgio Iemmolo to present a paper at the SLE Conference in Stockholm
- Giorgio Iemmolo and Robert Schikowski at the EuroBABEL Final Conference
- Fernando Zúñiga appointed chair in linugistics at the University of Bern
- Two new publications by Balthasar Bickel
- Sabine Stoll and Balthasar Bickel publish book chapter on "How to measure frequency?"
- Advanced student for research projected wanted
- Tobias Weber at the 12th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics
- Tobias Weber to present poster on non-canonical A marking
- Balthasar Bickel, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich and Taras Zakharko to present paper on semantic role clustering
- Tobias Weber to present paper at SEALS conference
- Mathias Jenny to present paper at SEALS conference
- Stellenausschreibung
- Balthasar Bickel awarded 3-year grant by the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme
- Talk by Miriam Butt at the Linguistisches Projektkolloquium
- Talk by John Payne at the Linguistisches Projektkolloquium
- Paper by Giorgio Iemmolo on differential object marking in Chinese accepted for publication
- Giorgio Iemmolo awarded Postdoc grant
- Talk by Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky at the Linguistisches Projektkolloquium
- Balthasar Bickel, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich and Giorgio Iemmolo at the "Anna Siewierska Memorial Workshop" in Leipzig
- Talk by Johanna Nichols at the Linguistisches Forschungskolloquium
- Six new grants at the department!
- Talk by Sebastian Fedden
- Fernando Zúñiga invited speaker at LMU Munich
- Talk by Stefan Evert
- Talk by Sabine Stoll at the Linguistisches Forschungskolloquium
- Accepted for publication
- Accepted for publication
- Talk by Bruno Cartoni
- Guest lecture by Rik van Gijn
- Talk by Rik van Gijn (Nijmegen)
- Giorgio Iemmolo at the 38th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society
- Guest lecture by Balthasar Bickel at LMU Munich
- Tobias Weber at the NEILS 7 conference
- Mathias Jenny at the NEILS 7 conference
- Fernando Zúñiga starts his SNSF Professorship
- Mathias Jenny promoted to Reader (Oberassistent)
- Giorgio Iemmolo defends his PhD thesis
- Sabine Stoll at the CLARIN project meeting in Cologne
- Balthasar Bickel is a discussant at this year's Nijmegen Lectures
- Reform of BA and MA curricula
- Talk by Walter Bisang (University of Mainz)
- Talk by Aris Xanthos
- Talk by Balthasar Bikel on multivariate typology at the Berner Zirkel für Sprachwissenschaft
- Plenarvortrag von Balthasar Bickel an der LDLT3 in London
- Vortrag von Balthasar Bickel an der Universität Genf
- Vortrag von Mathias Jenny bei der Siam Society in Bangkok
- Gastvortrag von Michael Cysouw
- Balthasar Bickel und Sabine Stoll am Workshop "Potentials of Language Documentation" in Leipzig
- Gastaufenthalt von David Denison
- Antrittsvorlesung von Prof. Dr. Balthasar Bickel
- Gastvortrag von Martin Haspelmath
- Wichtig: Tag der Lehre
- Vortrag von Taras Zakharko über ToolboxSearch am DoBeS Workshop Erfurt
- Vortrag von Mathias Jenny über Sprachkontaktphänomene in Burma
- Fernando Zúñiga Mitherausgeber der "Typological Studies in Language"
- Bibliothekskatalog online abrufbar
- Postdoc in Typologie
- Arbeitsstelle Psycholinguistik
- Stellenausschreibungen
- Neuer Seminarleiter
- Plenary talk at ALS by Sabine Stoll