I am currently researcher and lecturer working on nominal semantics, focusing on changes in partitivity in historical and present day varieties of English. I am currently working on my Habilitation under Remus Gergel, in English Linguistics at Saarland University. I am also the manager of the University of Frankfurt Semantics Laboratory under Cornelia Ebert.

My long term goal is refining notions of semantic complexity to better understand how language 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 currently participating in the project A comparitive corpus study of “race” and “Rasse”, which aims to investigate anti-racist language use and language policy.

My research projects are listed below, as are my publications and courses. You can find additional content on my Mastodon page.

Previous appointments

• Post-doc, under Yasu Sudo and Clemens Mayr in the IDEAlISM project.
• Post-doc, under Jacopo Romoli in the Semantics program at the University of Duesseldorf.
• Post-doc, under Carolin Biewer in the English Linguistics program at the University of Wuerzburg.
• Post-doc, under Remus Gergel, in English Linguistics at Saarland University.
• Lecturer, under Klaus P. Schneider, in English Linguistics at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.
• PhD Researcher, under Hana Filip, in Semantics at Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf.

Projects

Partitivity in English.

• Direct pseudo-partitives in American English, with Remus Gergel (Paper submitted).
• Partitives in the Grammatical History Germanic Languages, with Johanna Wood (Paper in prep).

Countability in English.

• Diachronic analyses.
  • Towards a history of the English countability system (Slides from the 2022 Workshop on Part-whole structures in natural language).
  • The development of the collectivization construction in English (Paper in prep).
• Countability in present Day Englishes.
  • 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.

• Sorani Kurdish
  • Countability in Sorani Kurdish, with Delan Kheder (Abstract).
  • The count-mass distinction in Sorani Kurdish (Paper under review).
• Romanian
  • Syntactic versus semantic countability categories, with Alyssa Löffler (Paper in prep).
• Greek
  • Object mass nouns in Greek, with Vasileia Skrimpa (Abstract).
  • A measure based analysis of plural nouns in Greek (Paper).
• Hungarian
  • Bare nouns and the Hungarian mass/count distinction, with Peter R. Sutton, and Hana Filip (Paper).
  • Object mass nouns and subkind countability, with Aviv Schoenfeld (Paper, Repository).
• Japanese
  • Object Mass Nouns as Arbiter for the Mass/Count Category, with Peter R. Sutton, Hana Filip, and Katrin Byrdeck (Paper).
  • Object Mass Nouns in Japanese, with Peter R. Sutton, Hana Filip, and Katrin Byrdeck (Paper).
• Predicting object mass nouns across languges (Paper).

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).

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

• A comparative corpus study of “race” and “Rasse”, with Benedict Kenyah-Damptey, Leda Berio, Daniel James, Esther Seyffarth (Paper).
• How do Germans and US- Americans Conceive of Race? Using Corpus Analysis and Semantic Feature Production Tasks to Compare the Structure of Race Conceptions, with Daniel James, Leda Berio, Benedict Kenyah-Damptey, (Paper under review Repository).

Publications

• Erbach, Kurt, Benedict Kenyah-Damptey, Leda Berio, Daniel James, Esther Seyffarth. 2023. A comparative corpus study of “race” and “Rasse”. Applied Corpus Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acorp.2023.100044
• Erbach, Kurt and Aviv Schoenfeld. 2022. Object mass nouns and subkind countability. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics (7)1. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5788
• Erbach, Kurt and Leda Berio. 2022. Countability shifts in the normative dimension. in Gutzmann, Daniel & Sophie Repp, Eds. Proceedings of Sinn und Beduetung 26. Universität zu Köln.
• Erbach, Kurt. 2021. Object Mass Nouns: A Frame Based Analysis. Heinrich-Heine-University, Duesseldorf. PhD Dissertation.
• Erbach, Kurt, Peter R. Sutton, Hana Filip, and Katrin Byrdeck. 2021. Object Mass Nouns as Arbiter for the Mass/Count Category. In Tibor Kiss, Halima Husic, and Francis J. Pelletier (eds.), The Semantics of the Count-Mass Distinction. Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108937979.008
• Erbach, Kurt. 2020. Predicting object mass nouns across languges. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 5.1 (2020): 228-241. https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v5i1.4698.
• Erbach, Kurt. 2019. A measure based analysis of plural nouns in Greek. In Espinal, M.T., E. Castroviejo, M. Leonetti, L. McNally, and C. Real-Puigdollers (eds). Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 23, vol 1. 413-431. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès).
• Erbach, Kurt and Leda Berio. 2019. Readings of Plurals and Common Ground. In E. Pacuit and J. Sikos (eds). At the Intersection of Language, Logic, and Information, Special Volume of Lecture notes in Computer Science, vol 11667. pp 21-41. Springer. Pre-final draft.
• Erbach, Kurt, Peter R. Sutton, and Hana Filip. 2019. Bare nouns and the Hungarian mass/count distinction. In: A. Silva, S. Staton, P. Sutton, C. Umbach (eds.), Language, Logic, and Computation. TbiLLC 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11456. pp. 86-107. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. Pre-final draft.
• Erbach, Kurt. 2018. Fighting for a share of the covers: Accounting for inaccessible readings of plural predicates. In: Sikos, J. (ed). Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2018 Student Session. pp. 197-208.
• Erbach, Kurt, Peter R. Sutton, Hana Filip, and Katrin Byrdeck. 2017. Object Mass Nouns in Japanese. In: Cremers, A., T. van Gessel, and F. Roelofsen (eds). Proceedings of the 21st Amsterdam Colloquium. pp. 235-244.
• Erbach, Kurt. 2014. Coordinate Systems in Gã. ScholarWorks. Missoula: The University of Montana Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library.

Teaching

• 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.