Kurt Erbach

I am a researcher and lecturer working on nominal semantics, focusing on changes in partitivity in historical and present day varieties of English. This focus is my habilitation project, which I am carrying out under Remus Gergel, in English Linguistics at Saarland University. I am also the manager of the University of Frankfurt Semantics Laboratory under Cornelia Ebert where I work on the semantics of gesture.

My long term goal is modeling semantic complexity and its role in diachronic changes. My short term goals include refining models partitivity that capture complexity across varities of English, both historical and in the present day. I also have ongoing projects looking at the count-mass distinction in other languages.

I am also committed to anti-discrimination language research, and am continuing research that began in the project “Rasse” - Zur Aushandlung eine belasteten deutschen Ausdrucks, which investigated anti-racist language use and language policy in Germany and the US.

News

Sept 26, 2024. Presented “Experimental findings for a cross-modal account of dynamic binding in gesture-speech interaction” at XPRAG.it 2024, in Venice, Italy.


Sept 17, 2024. Presented “From number classifying to number marking: Change in English countability” at Sinn und Bedeutung 29, in Noto, Itlay..


Sept 6, 2024. Presented “Relative complexity in countability systems; A look at countability in Central Kurdish” at Lectures on Iranian Linguistics in Arizona (online).


Sept 5, 2024. Abstract “Of of from from; Rethinking the partitive cycle” accepted for a poster presetation at LSA 2025, in Philadelphia, PA, USA.


Primary Projects

Partitivity in English.

  • Direct pseudo-partitives in American English, with Remus Gergel (Forthcoming).
  • Partitives in the Grammatical History Germanic Languages (R&R).
  • Testing dialects with simulations: The status of pseudo-partitives in US English, with Remus Gergel (Submitted).

Dynamic binding in gesture–speech interaction.

Secondary and Previous Projects

Countability in English.

  • Diachronic analyses.
  • Countability in present Day Englishes.
    • Non-canonical countability shifts (R&R).
    • Countability shifts in the normative dimension, with Leda Berio (Paper).
    • Counting and categorizing: The relationship between the mass/count distinction and thought, with Leda Berio, (Slides).
    • Varieties of mass/count interpretation of hybrid nouns, with Yasu Sudo (Abstract).

Countability across Languages.

  • Romanian
    • Syntactic versus semantic countability categories, with Alyssa Löffler (Paper in prep).
  • Sorani Kurdish
    • The count-mass distinction in Central Kurdish (Paper).
    • Variation in Countability Properties and Noun Classes; Countability in Central Kurdish, with Delan Kheder (Paper).
  • Greek
    • The acquisition of object mass nouns (In prep).
    • Object mass nouns in Greek, with Vasileia Skrimpa (Abstract).
    • A measure based analysis of plural nouns in Greek (Paper).
  • Hungarian
  • Japanese
  • Predicting object mass nouns across languges (Paper).

The concept of race in (US-American) English and (German) German.

Plural predication.

  • Fighting for a share of the covers: Accounting for inaccessible readings of plural predicates (Paper).
  • Readings of Plurals and Common Ground, with Leda Berio (Paper).

Publications

Teaching

  • Erbach, K. 2024. Topics in English semantics and pragmatics. Saarland University.
  • Erbach, K. 2023. Varieties of English. Saarland University.
  • Erbach, K. 2022. Contrasting Grammars Across Languages. Saarland University.
  • Erbach, K. 2022. Language and Power. University of Wuerzburg.
  • Erbach, K. and H. Filip. 2022. Genericity. Heinrich-Heine-University, Duesseldorf.
  • Erbach, K. and P. Maiwald. 2022. Research Methods in Linguistics. University of Wuerzburg.
  • Erbach, K. 2021. Applied Linguistics. Universty of Bonn.
  • Erbach, K. 2021. English Linguistics. University of Bonn.
  • Erbach, K. 2021. Introduction to Semantics. University of Bonn.
  • Erbach, K. 2021. Language in Culture and Cognition: Cross-cultural investigations.
  • Erbach, K. 2021. Varieties of English. University of Bonn.
  • Erbach, K. 2020. The acquisition of the mass/count distinction. Universty of Bonn.
  • Erbach, K. 2020. Corpus Linguistics. Universty of Bonn.
  • Erbach, K. 2020. Discourse and Power. Universty of Bonn.
  • Erbach, K. 2020. The History of the English Langauge. Universty of Bonn.
  • Erbach, K. 2020. Introduction to Semantics. Universty of Bonn.
  • Erbach, K. 2020. Language in Culture and Cognition: Speech Acts, Politeness, Discourse. Universty of Bonn.
  • Erbach, K. 2020. Methods in Applied Linguistics. Universty of Bonn.
  • Erbach, K. 2019. English Linguistics. Universty of Bonn.
  • Erbach, K. 2019. The Mass/Count Distinction, Applied Investigations. University of Bonn.
  • Erbach, K. 2017. Plurality. Heinrich-Heine-University, Dusseldorf.

Previous appointments